ECS 120 - Winter 2006 - List of Lecture Topics

Lecture Topic
Week 0 Lect 01 - R 1/05 - PR Introduction. Three problems of differing hardness. Strings, operators, languages.
Week 1 Lect 02 - T 1/10 - PR DFAs and their formalization. Finite languages are DFA-acceptable. Closure under complement.
Lect 03 - R 1/12 - PR Pigeonhold arguments for DFA size. Product construction.
Week 2 Lect 04 - T 1/17 - EB Example NFAs. NFA closure properties. Subset construction.
Lect 05 - R 1/19 - PR Quiz 1. Regular languages and regular expressions.
Week 3 Lect 06 - T 1/24 - EB Converting an NFA to a regular expression. The pumping lemma.
Lect 07 - R 1/26 - PR Review of regular languages. Diagnolization. Decision procedures for regular languages.
Week 4 Lect 08 - T 1/31 - EB More decision procedures on regular languages. Context-free languages.
Lect 09 - R 2/02 - PR Quiz 2. Formal definitions for CFLs. Ambiguity. PDAs.
Week 5 Lect 10 - T 2/07 - EB Review of CFLs, PDAs, ambiguity. PDAs accept the CFLs.
Lect 11 - R 2/09 - n/a Midterm
Lect 11' - F 2/10 - EB The pumping lemma for CFLs (covered in section)
Week 6 Lect 12 - T 2/14 - PR Pumping lemma review. CFL closure properties and decision proecures.
Lect 13 - R 2/16 - PR Turing machines: motivation, examples, definitions. Acceptable and decidable languages.
Week 7 Lect 14 - T 2/21 - EB Turing machines variants: multiple-tapes, RAMS, NTMs, etc.
Lect 15 - T 2/21 - PR Church-Turing thesis. Four-world theorem. Undecidability of the halting problem.
Week 8 Lect 16 - T 2/28 - EB Quiz 3. Reductions (important!) (the many-one variety): definitions and examples.
Lect 17 - R 3/2 - PR More examples of many-one reductions.
Week 9 Lect 18 - T 3/7 - EB The classes P and NP. Examples. Polynomial-time reducibility. Examples.
Lect 19 - R 3/9 - PR Review. NP-Completeness. Statement of Cook's theorem. Example reductions.
Week 10 Lect 20 - T 3/14 - ++ More reductions. Proof of Cook-Levin Theorem. Student evaluations.
Lect 20' - F 3/17 - ++ Final