Time: MWF  12:30 PM - 1:20 PM

Room: OS 410

Instructor: Professor R. D. Gumb

Office: Engineering 410

Telephone: (978) 934-3619

E-mail: gumb@cs.uml.edu
      (I will answer email during my office hours.)
           Please do not send e-mail to rgumb!

Office Hours:  MWF 9-10 AM

Teaching Assistant:  Patrick  Shaughnessy

GENERAL INFORMATION

1. Required Text.
   E. Kimber and C. Smith, Theory of Computing:  A Gentle Introduction (TCGI),
       Prentice-Hall, 2001.

2. Precis.
   This course is an introductory course for undergraduates in the
foundations of computer science.  Among the topics covered are regular languages,
finite automata, context-free grammars, pushdown automata, Turing machines,
deterministic and nondeterministic machines, and decidable and undecidable
problems.  In TCGI, we will cover most of the material in Chapters 1 through 5,
but very little, if any, of Chapter 6.

3. Simulators.
  Several different simulators are mentioned on the TCGI web page.  Other
simulators can be found on the web.  Note that many of these simulators use
somewhat different notation and conventions from that those in TCGI.

4. Attendance.
   Class attendance is important. You are responsible for all scheduling and other
announcements made in class, and concepts essential to the course are presented
in class.  You substantially increase the likelihood of your failing if you do
not attend class.

5. Grading.

Homework           35%

Quiz 1             15%

Quiz 2             20%

Final Exam         30%

The quizzes and final exam are closed book.

6. Homework.
    A hard copy of the homework is to be turned in before the beginning of the
lecture in the class period on the date that it is due (the deadline).   You
can turn in homework before the deadline.  The homework that you turn in
should be entirely due to your own efforts: You should not copy anyone else's
work, and you should not work with anyone else.  Further, you should insure
that your own work will not be distributed to other students, present or future,
for them to copy.
    Homework is graded on a scale of 0 to 10, and late homework submitted
within one week of the deadline will be accepted subject to a two (-2) point
penalty.

7. Schedule.

MEET  DATE         TOPIC
---- ---------  ----------------------------------------------

   1 Jan 23(W)  Introduction. Mathematical Preliminaries.  (Chapter 1)
   2     25(F)

   3    28 (M)
   4    30 (W)  (hw1)
   5 Feb 1 (F)  Finite Automata and Regular Languages.  (Chapter 2)

   6     4 (M)
   7     6 (W)  (hw2)
   8     8 (F)

   9    11 (M)
  10    13 (W)  (hw3)
                 Prof. James Moor, The Future of the Turing Test:
                   The Next 50 Years, 3 PM, Olsen 311 (Media Lab).
  11    15 (F)

        18 (M)  President's Day (No class).
  12    20 (W)
  13    21 (R)  (Monday Class Schedule) (hw4)
  14    22 (F)

  15    25 (M)
  16    27 (W)
  17 Mar 1 (F) Quiz 1

  18     4 (M)
  19     6 (W)  (hw5)
  20     8 (F)

  21    11 (M)
  22    13 (W)  (hw6)
  23    15 (F)

         18 - 22  Spring Recess (No classes)

  24    25 (M)  Context-Free Languages.  (Chapter 3)
  25    27 (W)  (hw7)
  26    29 (F)

  27 Apr 1 (M)
  28     3 (W)  (hw8)
  29     5 (F)

  30     8 (M)
  31    10 (W)
  32    12 (F)  Quiz 2

        15 (M)  Patriot's Day (No class)
  33    17 (W)
  34    19 (F)

  35    22 (M)  Turing Machines (Chapter 4) (hw9)
  36    24 (W)
        26 (F)  University Day (No class)

  37    29 (M)
  38 May 1 (W)
  39     3 (F)  (hw10)

  40     6 (M)
  41     8 (W)
  42    10 (F)  (Last day of class)

        16 (R)   Final Exam  3:00 PM, OS 412