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During the course of the term we will be covering most of Chapters 1 through 6. Because I have not taught this course for a while, I am not sure what pace we will be able to maintain. As a result, the syllabus is likely to be only an approximation to the actual schedule.

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Date Topic Reading Homework 
Sept. 5 Overview, math preliminaries 1.1-1.7 1 out 
Sept. 8 Proof Techniques, Alphabets, & 1.7-1.8 2 out 
 Languages 
Sept. 10 Languages and Regular Expressions 1.8-1.9 3 out; 1 due 
Sept. 12 Deterministic Finite Automata 2.1 4 out; 2 due 
Sept. 15 Nondeterministic Finite Automata 2.2 5 out; 3 due 
Sept. 17 Equivalence of DFAs & NDFAs 2.3 6 out; 4 due 
Sept. 18* Properties of Finite Automata 2.4 7 out; 
 Languages 
Sept. 19 Finite Automata & Regular Expressions 2.5 8 out; 5 due 
Sept. 29 Pumping Lemma for Finite Automata 2.6 9 out, 6, 7 due 
Oct. 1 Minimization & Simplification 10 out, 8 due
Oct. 2* Context-Free Grammars 3.1 11 out, 12 due 
Oct. 3 Relation between CFGs & Regular 3.2 12 out, 10 due
 Expressions 
Oct. 6 Pushdown Automata 3.3 14 out, 12 due
Oct. 8 PDAs & CFGs 3.4 15 out, 13 due
Oct. 10 Catch-up and Review for Exam; 14 due 
Oct. 13 Reading Period 
Oct. 15 Properties of CFGs (Exam I out ) 3.5 
Oct. 17 More Properties of CFGs (Exam I in) 16 out 
Oct. 20 Parsing 3.6 17 out, 15 due 
Oct. 22 More parsing 18 out, 16 due 
Oct. 24 Turing Machines 4.1 19 out, 17 due 
Oct. 27 Computing with Turing Machines 4.2 20 out, 18 due 
Oct. 29 Combining Turing Machines 4.3 21 out, 19 due 
Oct. 31 More Turing Machines 4.4 22 out, 20 due 
Nov. 3* Extensions of Turing Machines 4.5 23 out, 21 due 
Nov. 5 More extensions of Turing Machines 24 out, 22 due 
Nov. 7 Nondeterministic TMs 4.6 25 out, 23 due 
Nov. 10 Universal Turing Machines 5.7 26 out, 24 due 
Nov. 12 Church's Thesis (Exam II out) 5.1-5.2 27 out, 25 due 
Nov. 14 Other formalisms for computability 5.3-5.6 28 out, 26 due 
 (Exam II in) 
Nov. 17 Other formalisms for computability 5.3-5.6 29 out, 27 due 
Nov. 19 The Halting Problem 6.1 30 out, 28 due 
Nov. 21 Acceptability, Enumerability, 6.2 31 out, 29 due 
 Decidability 
Nov. 24 Unsolvable Problems about Turing 6.3 32 out, 30 due
 Machines & Grammars 
Nov. 26 More unsolvable problems 6.3 33 out, 31 due 
Nov. 28 Thanksgiving Recess 
Dec. 1 Unsolvable problems about grammars -- 32 due 
Dec. 3 Catch-up 33 due 

* I will be out of town the week of September 22. To make up for this evening classes will be scheduled on Thursday, Sept. 18 and October 2 from 7 to 8:15pm. These two 1 1/4 hour classes will make up for 3 50 minute classes.

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