CSIE 3110: Formal languages and automata theory

       

Instructor

  • Name: Tony Tan
  • Room: CSIE 516
  • Office hour: By appointment via email
  • Email: tonytan@csie.ntu.edu.tw
  • Personal website

Venue and time

  • Time: Monday, 10:20-13:00
  • There will be around 15 minute break in the middle of each lesson
  • Room: 104

Teaching assistants

  • TA mailing list: automata@csie.ntu.edu.tw.
  • If there is an issue that does not need a specific TA to settle, please write to TA mailing list above.
  • 林廷衛 (Lin Tingwei), r08922089@csie.ntu.edu.tw, TA hour: Tuesday, 16:00-17:00, room 401.
  • 呂佳軒 (Lu Chia-Hsuan), r09922064@ntu.edu.tw, r09922064@csie.ntu.edu.tw, TA hour: Tuesday, 11:00-12:00, room 401.
  • 潘廣霖 (Pan Kuang-Lin), r08922087@csie.ntu.edu.tw, TA hour: Wednesday, 14:00-15:00, room 401.
  • 陳法熏 (Chen Fahsun), b06902062@ntu.edu.tw, TA hour: Tuesday, 13:00-14:00, room 401.
  • 周寬 (Chou Kuan), b06902085@ntu.edu.tw, TA hour: Friday, 14:00-15:00, room 401.
  • If needed, you may try to arrange another time slot with the TA directly.

Recommended textbooks

  • Introduction to the Theory of Computation by M. Sipser.
  • Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation by J. Hopcroft and J. Ullman, 1st edition.
  • Chapter 1 in The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms by A. Aho, J. Hopcroft and J. Ullman.

Administrations

  • All notes and homeworks (in both pdf and tex files) will be posted here.
  • To compile the tex file, you will need this file: mysty.sty
  • There will be two homeworks, each weighs 20%.
  • Midterm and final exams weigh 30% each.
  • The instructions on homework submissions will be provided in each homework.

Schedule (tentative)

Week Dates Lesson Remark
Part 0: Preliminaries
I 14 Sep. Lesson 0. Preliminaries --
Part 1: Regular languages and context-free languages
II 21 Sep. Lesson 1. Finite state automata --
III 28 Sep. Lesson 2. Pumping lemma and regular expressions --
IV 5 Oct. Lesson 3. Context-free grammars HW 1
V 12 Oct. Lesson 4. Push-down automata --
VI 19 Oct. Lesson 5. Equivalence between CFL and PDA --
VII 26 Oct. Review week with exercises HW 1 due.
Midterm exam
VIII 2 Nov. Midterm exam: Monday, 19:00--21:00, room: 103 and 104. --
Part 2: Turing machines and some basic complexity classes
IX 9 Nov. Lesson 6. Turing machines and decidable languages --
X 16 Nov. Lesson 7. Turing machines and the notion of algorithm --
XI 23 Nov. Lesson 8. Universal Turing machines and halting problem --
XII 30 Nov. Lesson 9. Reducibility HW 2
XIII 7 Dec. Lesson 10. Non-deterministic Turing machines --
XIV 14 Dec. Lesson 11. Basic complexity classes --
XV 21 Dec. Lesson 12. NP-complete languages --
XVI 28 Dec. Review week HW 2 due.
Reading week and final exam
XVII 4 Jan. Reading week --
XVIII 11 Jan. Final exam: Monday, 10:30--12:30, room: 103 and 104. --