UMBC CMSC451, Automata Theory & Formal Languages, Fall 2008

News Archive

• [Thu Dec 18 13:26 2008]
  The last homework score and letter grades have been posted to Blackboard. There was a small curve. Have a good break!

• [Thu Dec 18 13:26 2008]
  The scores for the final exam in CSMC451 have been posted to Blackboard. Remember that the total points on the exam was 140, not 100. The average score on the final exam for students receiving a letter grade was 115.4/140 = 82.4%.

• [Thu Dec 04 16:25 2008]
  Topics for the final exam are:
  1. DFA or NFA construction
  2. Pumping Lemma for regular languages
  3. Context-Free Grammar construction
  4. Pushdown Automaton construction
  5. Pumping Lemma for context-free languages
  6. Turing Machine construction
  7. Undecidability

• [Mon Dec 01 12:15 2008]
  Posted some hints and changes to Questions 3 and 4 on Homework 13.

• [Tue Nov 25 16:40 2008]
  Homework 13 posted. Note that Homework 13 is not due until Tuesday, December 9.

• [Tue Nov 18 14:10 2008]
  Grades have been updated on Blackboard. The scores include Homework 1–10 and Quiz 1–4.

• [Tue Nov 18 13:00 2008]
  Here are the Wikipedia entries for the Brouwer fixed point theorem and the Hairy ball theorem (yes, it's called that):
  • Brouwer fixed point theorem
  • Hairy ball theorem

• [Tue Nov 18 11:10 2008]
  A Perl program that prints itself: self.pl.

• [Tue Nov 18 10:15 2008]
  Homework 12 posted.

• [Tue Nov 11 10:35 2008]
  Homework 11 posted.

• [Tue Nov 04 10:23 2008]
  Homework 10 posted.

• [Mon Nov 03 14:30 2008]
  Homework 9 Question #4: make that a FIFO queue (and not a LIFO queue).

• [Mon Nov 03 14:30 2008]
  Prof. Chang's office hours on Thursday November 6th is moved to 1pm–2pm.

• [Fri Oct 31 15:30 2008]
  Scores have been updated on BlackBoard through Homework 7 and Quiz 3. So far we have 45 points (7 homeworks × 3 points + 3 quizzes × 8 points). The class average is 38.13 out of 45 which is roughly 84.7%.

• [Tue Oct 28 11:25 2008]
  Homework 9 posted.

• [Wed Oct 22 11:40 2008]
  The handout from last Thursday which showed the construction of a context-free grammar from a PDA is available: pda2cfg.pdf.

• [Tue Oct 21 10:45 2008]
  Homework 8 posted.

• [Tue Oct 14 23:25 2008]
  Grades for Homeworks 1–5 and quizzes 1&2 posted to course Blackboard site.

• [Tue Oct 14 09:32 2008]
  Homework 7 posted.

• [Tue Oct 14 09:32 2008]
  Please ignore the "part b" in Question 4 of Homework 6.

• [Tue Oct 07 13:22 2008]
  Quiz 2 (on Thursday 10/09) will consist of two questions on the pumping lemma for regular languages. The statement of the pumping lemma will be given to you on the quiz, so you don't have to memorize it. However, you will need to know how to use the pumping lemma.

• [Tue Oct 07 10:02 2008]
  Homework 6 posted.

• [Tue Sep 30 10:25 2008]
  We're moving! Beginning Thursday, October 2, this class will meet in Sondheim Room 109.

• [Tue Sep 30 10:25 2008]
  Homework 5 posted.

• [Tue Sep 23 08:52 2008]
  Homework 4 posted.

• [Tue Sep 16 10:03 2008]
  Homework 3 posted.

• [Tue Sep 09 08:10 2008]
  Homework 2 posted.

• [Thu Aug 28 13:15 2008]
  Homework 1 posted.

• [Thu Aug 28 13:15 2008]
  Books mentioned in class today:

  • If you are interested in an essay on how recursion appears everywhere, there is Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter.

  • Anyone interested in mathematics should know about Gödel. Gödel's Proof by Nagel & Newman is a quick treatment of the subject. You don't need a class in mathematical logic to follow this book.

  • Vernor Vinge has a two science fiction novels where the laws of physics and the limits of computation actually depend on one's location in the galaxy: A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. These are both Hugo Award winners and are fun stories.

• [Thu Aug 28 11:15 2008]
  Our TA is Kunal Narsinghani and his office hours are now posted on the contacts page.

• [Tue Aug 05 17:05 2008]
  Office hours start on Tuesday, August 26th.

• [Tue Aug 05 14:34 2008]
  Course description and syllabus available in PDF (hard copies will be distributed in class, too.): description.pdf and syllabus.pdf.

• [Tue Aug 05 14:30 2008]
  Note: Be aware of the schedule of in-class quizzes listed in the syllabus! The first quiz is on Thursday, September 25.

• [Tue Aug 05 14:28 2008]
  Web page up.