UMBC CMSC451, Automata Theory & Formal Languages, Fall 2005

Course Syllabus



We will follow the textbook Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation (second edition) by Hopcroft, Motwani and Ullman. The following schedule outlines the material to be covered during the semester and specifies the corresponding sections in the textbook.

  Homework
Date Topic Quizzes Reading Assign Due
Thu 09/01 Proofs, Strings & Languages 1.1-1.5
Tue 09/06 Deterministic Finite Automata (DFA) 2.1-2.2 HW1
Thu 09/08 Nondeterministic Finite Automata (NFA) 2.3.1-2.3.4
Tue 09/13 Equivalence of DFAs & NFAs 2.3.4-2.3.6, 2.5 HW2 HW1
Thu 09/15 Regular Expressions 3.1-3.3
Tue 09/20 Regular Language Pumping Lemma 4.1 HW3 HW2
Thu 09/22 Regular Language Closure Properties Quiz 1 4.2
Tue 09/27 Regular Language Decision Properties 4.3 HW4 HW3
Thu 09/29 DFA Minimization 4.4
Tue 10/04 Context-free Grammars (CFG) 5.1 HW5 HW4
Thu 10/06 Parse Trees Quiz 2 5.2
Tue 10/11 Ambiguity 5.4 HW6 HW5
Thu 10/13 Pushdown Automata (PDA) 6.1-6.2
Tue 10/18 PDAs for CFGs 6.3.1 HW7 HW6
Thu 10/20 CFGs for PDAs Quiz 3 6.3.2
Tue 10/25 Chomsky Normal Form 7.1 HW8 HW7
Thu 10/27 Context-free Pumping Lemma 7.2
Tue 11/01 Context-free Closure Properties 7.3 HW9 HW8
Thu 11/03 Context-free Decision Properties Quiz 4 7.4
Tue 11/08 Turing Machines I 8.1-8.2 HW10 HW9
Thu 11/10 Turing Machines II 8.3-8.4
Tue 11/15 Turing Machines III 8.5-8.6 HW11 HW10
Thu 11/17 Undecidability I Quiz 5 9.1
Tue 11/22 Undecidability II 9.2 HW11
Thu 11/24 Thanksgiving Day
Tue 11/29 Reductions 9.3 HW12
Thu 12/01 Undecidability III 9.4-9.5
Tue 12/06 P vs NP 10.1 HW13 HW12
Thu 12/08 NP-completeness I Quiz 6 10.2
Tue 12/13 NP-completeness II 10.3-10.4 HW13
Thu 12/15 Final Exam 1:00pm - 3:00pm


Last Modified: 18 Aug 2005 16:15:01 EDT by Richard Chang
to Fall 2005 CMSC 451 Homepage