6.045/18.400
Automata, Computability, and Complexity

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February 2007
Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
        1 2 3
4 5 6 7
Class begins
Lecture 1: Introduction. Course overview.
8
Recitation 1: Math Review
9 10
11 12
Lecture 2: DFAs and the languages they recognize. Operations on languages. Closure of DFA-recognizable languages under various operations.
13 14
Lecture 3: NFAs and the languages they recognize. NFAs vs. DFAs. Closure of languages under operations, revisited.
15
Recitation 2: DFAs and NFAs
16 17
18 19
No class
(Presidents Day)
20
Lecture 4: Regular Expressions. Regular expressions and FA-recognizable languages.
21
Lecture 5: Non-regular Languages. Pumping Lemma. Language homomorphisms.
22
Recitation 3: Regular Expressions and Non-regular languages
23 24
25 26
Lecture 6: Algorithms that answer questions about FAs and regular expressions
27 28
Lecture 7: Quiz 1. Covers material from classes 1-6.

March 2007
Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
        1
Recitation 4: Quiz Questions and Automata Wrap-up
2 3
4 5
Lecture 8: Introduction to computability. Basic Turing machines. Some variations.
6 7
Lecture 9:Decidable languages vs. recognizable languages. Enumerable languages. Nondeterministic Turing machines. Turing machines that answer questions about FAs and regular expressions.
8
Recitation 5: Turing Machines
9 10
11 12
Lecture 10: Undecidability. The Halting Problem. A non-Turing-recognizable language.
13 14
Lecture 11: Undecidability. Computation histories. Post Correspondence Problem.
15
Recitation 6: Undecidibility
16 17
18 19
Lecture 12: Undecidability. Counter machines. Stack machines.
20 21
Lecture 13: Computable functions. Mapping reducibility. Applications of mapping reducibility to show undecidability and non-recognizability. Rice's Theorem. Applications of Rice's Theorem to show undecidability.
22
Recitation 7: Reducibility, Rice's Theorem and Recursion Theorem
23 24
25 26
Spring Vacation
27
Spring Vacation
28
Spring Vacation
29
Spring Vacation
30
Spring Vacation
31
Spring Vacation

April 2007
Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
1 2
Lecture 14:Self-referencing machines. The Recursion Theorem. Applications of the Recursion Theorem.
3 4
Lecture 15: Quiz 2. Covers material from classes 8-14.
5
Recitation 8: Quiz 2 Questions and Computability Wrap-up
6 7
8 9
Lecture 16:Complexity theory. Time complexity analysis. Asymptotic function notation. Time complexity classes. P, Polynomial time.
10 11
Lecture 17:Hierarchy theorems. NP, Nondeterministic Polynomial time. Examples of NP problems. P vs. NP.
12
Recitation 9: P vs NP.
13 14
15 16
No Class
(Patriots Day)
17 18
Lecture 18: Polynomial-time reducibility. Examples: Clique and Vertex Cover. NP-completeness.
19
Recitation 10: Poly-Time Reductions
20 21
22 23
Lecture 19: SAT is NP-complete. 3SAT, CLIQUE are NP-complete.
24 25
Lecture 20: More NP-complete problems. Traveling Salesman, Multiprocessor Scheduling,...
26
Recitation 11: NP-Completeness
27 28
29 30
Lecture 21: Still more NP-complete problems. Survey of other topics in computability: Optimization vs. decision problems. Higher-order complexity classes. Oracle complexity classes.

May 2007
Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
    1 2
Lecture 22: Quiz 3. Covers material from classes 16-21.
3
Recitation 12: Quiz 3 Questions and End of Time-Complexity
4 5
6 7
Lecture 23: Space complexity. Deterministic vs. nondeterministic space complexity classes (Savitch's Theorem). Polynomial space and Pspace-completeness. TQBF. TQBF is Pspace-complete.
8 9
Lecture 24: L, Log space. NL, Nondeterministic Log space. Extension of Savitch's theorem to smaller space bounds. Log space reducibility and NL-completeness. PATH is NL-complete. NL vs. P and coNL.
10
Recitation 13: Space Complexity III
11 12
13 14
Lecture 25: Probabilistic Turing machines. PPT Turing machines. Probabilistic time complexity classes, BPP and RP. Example: Primality testing.
15
16
Last class
Lecture 26: Probabilistic time complexity classes. Example: Branching-program equivalence. Relationships among classes. Wrapup.
17
Last recitations
Recitation 14: Probabilistic Complexity and Interactive Proofs
18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31


Elena Grigorescu
Last modified: Wednesday Feb 02, 2007