CMSC 379:  Elementary Theory of Computation and Formal Languages

			    Fall 1987

Instructor: 	Dr. Howard E. Motteler
Office: 	Rm 111, CMSC BLDG (Temp. Building)
Office Hrs:	Mondays & Wendsdays After Class
Text:		Lewis & Papadimitriou

Topics to be covered:

Sets, Relations, and Languages			(chapter 1)
------------------------------

Review of discrete math:  elementary logic, sets, relations, and 
functions.  Binary relations, closure of a relation. 

Fundamental proof techniques:  Induction, diagonalization, and
the "pigeon-hole principle."   

Alphabets and Languages;  finite representation of languagues,
regular expressions.

Finite Automata	 				(chapter 2)
---------------

Deterministic and non-deterministic finite automata; equivalence
of finite automata and regular languages.

Properties of regular languages; proofs that languages are not
regular. 

Context Free Languages				(chapter 3)
----------------------

Context-free grammars; regular languages and context free
languages.  Pushdown automata and context free grammars.
Properties of context-free languages.

Properties of context free languages: closure properties,
periodicity, and decidability.  Languages which are not context
free.  

Determinism and parsing:  deterministic pushdown automata, top
down and bottoms up parsing.

Computability			(selections from chapters 4 & 5)
-------------

Primitive recursive and recursive functions. Turing machines,
universal machines, and Church's thesis.  The halting problem.