ECS 120 – Theory of Computation

ECS 120 – Theory of Computation – Spring 2015

Cover image from
Introduction to Formal Language Theory (1978)
by Prof. Michael Harrison (UCB)

This page last updated
6/9/2015 at 11:05 pm

Announcements

The final exam has been graded. It wasn’t very good: the mean was 62/125; the median was 59/125; the std dev was 25. Scores ranged from 14/125 to 118/125. Here is the final-exam histogram (by percentages, not raw score).
Grades have been assigned, too. I assigned a median grade of a middle-C (261.6 hertz). This is a little lower than my usual for this class. If you got a good grade, you can feel some pride: you earned it. If you worked hard and got a poor grade, I am sorry it worked out that way. It happens.

General Information

Lectures to date will grow with each lecture – also shows the date of all exams
Course information sheet – please read it – you are responsible for everything on it
Spring 2014 lectures and Fall 2012 videos – doubles as a syllabus
SmartSite chat room and Facebook group
Readings: Sipser, Chapters 0 – 5, 7
Instructor: Phillip Rogaway – 3009 Kemper – please see my homepage for my office hours
Office hours:
Monday 2-3: Phillip Rogaway, Kemper 3009
Tuesday 10-12: Aaron Okano, Kemper 55
Thursday 10-1: Aaron Okano, Kemper 55
Thursday 3-5: Thomas Proven, Kemper 55.
Thursday 1-3: Phillip Rogaway, Kemper 3009.
Friday 1-2: Thomas Proven, Kemper 55
My lecture notes

Problem Sets

Exams

Practice Exams

Miscellaneous

Rice’s theorem
Entscheidungsproblem - the problem whose solution led to the development of the “Turing machine”
Turing’s paper on this problem and a modern view of it.
Natural Wonders Every Child Should Know (Brewster, 1912) - A children’s science book Alan Turing liked as a child
Myhill-Nerode writeups from Wikipedia and Hogberg and Larsson and Konrad Slind
CYK algorithm: Wikipedia, Youtube example
Do Waterfalls Play Chess? (Antonio Porreca’s summary of)
Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity by Scott Aaronson