Dr. Gabriel Robins Professor of Computer Science Department of Computer Science School of Engineering and Applied Science University of Virginia www.cs.virginia.edu/robins Email: GabeRobins@gmail.com Phone: (434) 249-0809 Gabe's Vitae / Resume (NIH Biosketch) Mailing address: P.O. Box 6189 Charlottesville, VA 22906-6189

CS6160 - Theory of Computation, UVa

• New: You can watch the course lecture videos on YouTube

• Syllabus (which includes the cheating/plagiarism policy)

• Homeworks:
  • Homework 1 (and the MS Word version), due 11:59pm Fri Feb 9, no late submissions accepted
  • Homework 2 (and the MS Word version), due 11:59pm Sat Feb 24, no late submissions accepted
  • Homework 3 (and the MS Word version), due 11:59pm Sat Mar 10, no late submissions accepted
  • Homework 4 (and the MS Word version), due 11:59pm Sun Apr 8, no late submissions accepted
  • Homework 5 (and the MS Word version), due 11:59pm Sun Apr 29, no late submissions accepted

• Problem sets (please work on these daily throughout the semester):
  • Problem set 1, and some solutions
  • Problem set 2
  • Problem set 3
  • Problem set 4
  • Problem set 5
  • Problem set 6
  • Problem set 7
  • Problem set 8

• TA and Prof contact information and office hours

• Q&A will also be conducted via Collab, and also by Email and posted on the course blog continuously.

• Emails to the class (posted here for completeness):
  • Welcome to Theory of Computation

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• The homework readings in this class consist of a minimum of 36 items from the recommended readings list. The required ones are highlighted in red font there, while the rest are "electives". The readings item types will constitute a diverse mix, with a minimum of at least 15 videos, at least 15 papers / Web sites, and at least 6 books. Any items above 36 will count towards extra-credit.

  The minimum writeup requirements are a 2-paragraph description for each paper / video / Web site, and a 2-page description for books (longer writeups are of course welcomed also). Each writeup should summarize what you learned from it, what you found interesting / surprising, etc. At least two submissions are due each week (each Monday by 11:59pm, beginning the second week of classes, i.e. Mon Jan 22) with no late submissions accepted, and more than two submissions per week are of course very welcomed and highly recommended. However, no more than two submissions per day are allowed (if more than two submissions per day occur, only the first two will be credited). This policy (which will be strictly enforced) is designed to help you avoid procrastination and "cramming" at the end of the semester, and also to help you retain more of the knowledge by pacing it more evenly over time.

  Please use the CS6160 submission form to turn in all readings. (In the extremely rare cases that this Web form doesn't work for you, please Email your submission to homework.cs6160@gmail.com.)

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• Questionnaire

• Basic concepts and notation

• Discrete math review slides: logic, sets, and functions

• JFLAP automata simulator app

• Lecture Slides:
  • All algorithms and theory slides (in editable Powerpoint format - very useful!)

  • Historical perspectives (part 1): Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, and Eratosthenes (and PDF)
  • Historical perspectives (part 2): al-Hasan, Fibonacci, Descartes, Fermat, Pascal, Newton, Euler, Gauss, and Hamilton (and PDF)
  • Historical perspectives (part 3): Boole, De Morgan, Babbage, Lovelace, Carroll, Venn, Cantor, and Russell (and PDF)
  • Historical perspectives (part 4): Hardy, Ramanujan, Ramsey, and Hilbert (and PDF)
  • Historical perspectives (part 5): Godel, Church, and Turing (and PDF)
  • Historical perspectives (part 6): von Neumann, Shannon, Kleene, and Chomsky (and PDF)
  • Formal languages, automata models, grammars, decidability, and Rice's theorem (and PDF)
  • Computational universality and the Church-Turing thesis (and PDF)
  • More fractal-based algorithmic art (and PDF)
  • Resource-bounded computation, complexity classes, gap theorems, alternation, the polynomial hierarchy, probabilistic TM's, and the complexity zoo (and PDF)
  • The Turing test, robotics, and the technological singularity (and PDF)
  • NP completeness, approximation algorithms, and zero-knowledge proofs (and PDF)
  • Concepts, ideas, and techniques (and PDF)

• Course evaluation (and plain text version)

• Q and A blog: PLEASE READ THIS OFTEN!

• Good readings and videos

• Good puzzles and games stores