TCS / Studies / T-79.1001 Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science T
Helsinki University of Technology, Laboratory for Theoretical Computer Science

T-79.1001 Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science T (4 cr)

Spring 2006

This introductory course on the theory of computation covers the basic aspects of finite automata and regular languages, context-free grammars and pushdown automata, Turing machines and computability theory.

The course T-79.1001 replaces the earlier course T-79.148 Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science .

[Current] [General] [Lectures] [Tutorials] [Exams] [Material] [Feedback] [Links]

Previous years: [Autumn 2005] [Spring 2005] [Autumn 2004] [Spring 2004] [Autumn 2003] [Spring 2003] [Autumn 2002] [Spring 2002] [Spring 2001] [Spring 2000] [Spring 1999] [Spring 1998]

Current

  • [4 May 2006] Please provide feedback on the course via the DCSE department's course feedback system. Filling in the feedback form is rewarded by one bonus exam point, used to increase any passing grade earned from the course. The electronic questionnaires open Fri 5 May and close Mon 22 May.
  • [4 May 2006] The course exam is on Friday 19 May, 3--6 p.m. Check the time and place still from the departmental exam schedule, remember to register for the exam via TOPI by Sun 14 May, and note that all your Regis assignments must be completed by the exam date --- otherwise your exam paper will not be graded (really!).
  • [6 Apr 2006] Because of the Easter break, there is no lecture on Thu 13 April, and correspondingly no tutorial sessions on 18--19 April.
  • [22 Mar 2006] New sets of Regis assignments have now been generated for those students who started the course in Autumn 2005, are continuing in Spring 2006, and did not complete their old problem sets by the 9 Mar 2006 expiration deadline.
  • [17 Mar 2006] Validation of Regis assignments generated in Autumn 2005 or earlier has now been suspended. All participants in the Spring 2006 course should by now have new assignments, generated on or after 3 Feb 2006.
  • [4 Mar 2006] The departmental course feedback questionnaires for courses in period III/2006 are accessible here from Fri 3 Mar until Fri 17 Mar. If you are taking the short version of the course (T-79.1002), please reply; you will rewarded by an exam bonus point (cf. below). The feedback questionnaires for the long version of the course (T-79.1001) will open in May.
  • [26 Feb 2006] After the exam week break, lectures for the course resume in week 11 (16 Mar), and tutorials correspondingly in week 12 (21-22 Mar).
  • [23 Feb 2006] There are no lectures on the course in week 9 (27 Feb - 3 Mar), but the tutorial sessions are arranged as usual. Week 10 (6-10 Mar) is exam week, and this course has neither lectures nor tutorials on that week. The final exam for the short version (T-79.1002, 2 cr) of the course takes place on Thu 9 Mar. You must register for the exam via the TOPI system by Mon 6 Mar 8 a.m. All the compulsory Regis problems must have been solved by the time of the exam. The exam for the long version of the course (T-79.1001, 4 cr takes place on Fri 19 May. Participants in the long version of the course should NOT go to the exam on 9 Mar. (Exception: the repeat exam for the participants of T-79.1001 from Autumn 2005 takes place on that date.)
  • [3 Feb 2006] The computerised Regis/Stratum assignments have now been generated for all new students registered for the course. For further information, see the general computerised assignments info page.
  • [3 Jan 2006] First lecture Thu 19 Jan 2-5 p.m., Lecture Hall T1. Note that the first lecture is exceptionally 3 hrs long.
  • [3 Jan 2006] Registration via TOPI opens Mon 16 Jan at 9:00 and closes Fri 27 Jan at 18:00. Registration is compulsory.
  • [3 Jan 2006] Recommended reading for Finnish students: Ajankäyttötutkimuksen satoa eli miten saan ystäviä, menestystä ja hyvän arvosanan tietojenkäsittelyteorian perusteista by Harri Haanpää (a statistical analysis of factors affecting course performance in Spring 2004, in Finnish).
  • [3 Jan 2006] Next exam for the Autumn 2005 and earlier versions of the course on Thu 9 March. Registration via TOPI. All compulsory Regis assignments must have been completed before participating in the exam.

General Information

  • The course consists of:
    • lectures (2 h per week, in Finnish)
    • tutorials (1 h per week, one group in English)
    • an examination

  • Registration for the course is by TOPI. You must register in order to take the course, even if you were not intending to attend the lectures or the tutorials. (Registrations are needed for bookkeeping purposes, specifically for generating your set of computerised home assignments; see below.) One of the tutorial groups (indicated below) will be given in English and the rest in Finnish. Registration for the tutorials opens Mon 16 Jan at 9:00 and closes Fri 27 Jan at 18:00.

  • In order to pass the course you have to:
    1. complete four compulsory sets of home assignments, and
    2. get a passing grade on the exam, as augmented by credit earned from the tutorials.
    The compulsory assignments are individually computer-generated for each student, and are submitted over the network. Completing these assignments is a mandatory prerequisite for participating in the exam. For more details, see the computerised assignments info page.

  • Newsgroup: opinnot.tik.tkt

Lectures

Lectures by Pekka Orponen on Thursdays 2 p.m. - 4 p.m. in Lecture Hall T1 of the Computer Science building. The first lecture is on Thu 19 Jan, and is exceptionally three hours long (2 - 5 p.m.) The lectures are in Finnish, and the slides will appear here after each lecture. The contents will likely be very close to those from previous years, e.g. Autumn 2005.

English translations of the lecture slides from Spring 2004 are available here.

Lecture schedule (tentative):
Week Date Topic Sipser Lewis-Papadimitriou Lecture slides (in Finnish)
3.Jan 19 Review of basic mathematics (functions, relations, induction). Alphabets, strings and languages. Pp. 1-16, 23-25 1.1-1.3, 1.5, 1.7 PostScript PDF
4.Jan 26 Finite automata. Pp. 31-43 2.1 PostScript PDF
5.Feb 2 Automata minimisation. Nondeterministic finite automata. Pp. 47-58, 275 2.2, 2.5 PostScript PDF
6.Feb 9 Regular expressions and finite automata. Pp. 58-76 1.8, 2.3 PostScript PDF
7.Feb 16 Context-free grammars and languages. Regular grammars. Pp. 91-98 3.1 PostScript PDF
8.Feb 23 Parse trees and derivations. Recursive-descent parsing of LL(1) grammars. - 3.2, 3.7 (partly) PostScript PDF
9.Mar 2 No lecture.
10.Mar 9 Exam week; no lecture.
11.Mar 16 Chomsky normal form and the CYK parsing algorithm. Pushdown automata. Pp. 98-114, 240-241 3.3, 3.4, 3.6 PostScript PDF
12.Mar 23 Countable and uncountable sets. The halting problem. Regular and context-free pumping lemmata. Pp. 77-83, 115-119, 161-164 1.4, 2.4, 3.5 PostScript PDF
13.Mar 30 Turing machines: standard, multitrack and multitape. Nondeterministic Turing machines. Pp. 125-140 4.1, 4.3, 4.5 PostScript PDF
14.Apr 6 Recursive and recursively enumerable languages. Turing machine encoding and universal Turing machines. 142-143, 4.2, 5.1, 5.2, 5.7 PostScript PDF
15.Apr 13 Easter vacation; no lecture.
16.Apr 20 Undecidability. Rice's theorem. 159-168, 171-174, 1965.3, 5.4 PostScript PDF
17.Apr 27 General and context-sensitive grammars. Linear bounded automata. The Chomsky hierarchy. -4.6 p. 271 PostScript PDF
18.May 4 Review and discussion of the course material. Exam requirements.

Tutorials

The tutorials start the week after the first lecture. The Wednesday 16-17 tutorial session is given in English, the others are in Finnish. The head assistant of the course is Tommi Syrjänen.

Day Time Location Assistant
Tue 10-11 F Matti Järvisalo
11-12 F Matti Järvisalo
14-15 Y228 Vesa Ojala
15-16 Y228 Vesa Ojala
Wed 12-13 Y228 Antti Hyvärinen
13-14 Y228 Antti Hyvärinen
16-17 J Tommi Syrjänen (In English)
17-18 J Tommi Syrjänen

TOPI registration for the tutorials opens Mon 16 Jan at 9:00 and closes Fri 27 Jan at 18:00. You must register in order to take the course, even if you were not intending to physically attend the tutorials. (Registrations are needed for bookkeeping purposes, specifically for generating your set of computerised home assignments; see below.)

In the tutorials, there will be three home assignments and two or three demonstration problems each week. The tutorials are not compulsory, but bonus exam points (max 6) will be awarded for doing the home assignments and marking them as done at the tutorial sessions. The grading scheme for the home assignments is as follows:
Problems solved Bonus points
5 1
10 2
15 3
20 4
25 5
30 6

The demonstration problems are likely to be 90% the same as in the previous instalment of the course, and are discussed at the tutorials to the extent that time permits. In addition to the voluntary tutorials there are three compulsory computer-generated "Regis" problem sets. (See the info page.)

Tutorial problems: Electronic copies downloadable here each week. Paper copies available at the lectures, and from the rack outside the theory lab office (TB336). Solutions for the demonstration problems are provided here as the course progresses.

  1. tehtävät (pdf) ratkaisut (pdf) problems (pdf) solutions (pdf)
  2. tehtävät (pdf) ratkaisut (pdf) problems (pdf) solutions (pdf)
  3. tehtävät (pdf) ratkaisut (pdf) problems (pdf) solutions (pdf)
  4. tehtävät (pdf) ratkaisut (pdf) problems (pdf) solutions (pdf)
  5. tehtävät (pdf) ratkaisut (pdf) problems (pdf) solutions (pdf)
  6. tehtävät (pdf) ratkaisut (pdf) problems (pdf) solutions (pdf)
  7. tehtävät (pdf) ratkaisut (pdf) problems (pdf) solutions (pdf)
  8. tehtävät (pdf) ratkaisut (pdf) problems (pdf) solutions (pdf)
  9. tehtävät (pdf) ratkaisut (pdf) problems (pdf) solutions (pdf)
  10. tehtävät (pdf) ratkaisut (pdf) problems (pdf) solutions (pdf)
  11. tehtävät (pdf) ratkaisut (pdf) problems (pdf) solutions (pdf)
  12. tehtävät (pdf) ratkaisut (pdf) problems (pdf) solutions (pdf)

Tutorial scores.

Validity of tutorial and Regis problems and their bonus points. Exams for the course are for the time being scheduled for examination periods 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 of the academic year (August, October, December, March, May). As long as that schedule holds:

  • The Regis problems generated in a given autumn / spring semester will be valid until the Mar / Oct exam in the following semester.
  • Fully completed Regis assignments, and any bonus points earned in a given autumn / spring semester will be valid until the Oct / Mar exam in the following year.

Examinations and Grading

In general, exams for the course are scheduled for March, May, August, October, and December of each year. The main course exam in Spring 2006 is scheduled for Fri 19 May. There is also an exam for other instantiations of the course, scheduled for Thu 9 March.

To participate in an exam, you must first complete your personal computer-aided Regis exercises. See the exam requirements. Remember also to register for the exam.

Grading: Exam max 60 points, tutorials max 6 points. Min passing grade approx. 30 points (tolerance 4 p), highest grade (5) approx. 54 points. In the case of "close call" failures (at most 2 points below passing) despite serious study effort (at least 4 tutorial bonus points), there is a possibility of getting a passing grade by solving additional tutorial problems. To discuss this option, please contact the lecturer after the exam has been graded.

Bonus points earned from the tutorials are added directly to the exam points, and may help to change the exam grade from failing to passing. Bonus points earned from Regis/Stratum assignments completed on time (see the info page) are only added afterwards to a passing exam grade, and may thus help to increase the grade, but not pass the course. Note that the Regis assignments must in any case be completed before the exam, and extra points are awarded only for completion by the bonus deadline of March 9, 4 p.m.

Material

Feedback

Please provide feedback on the course via the DCSE department's course feedback system. Filling in the feedback form is rewarded by one bonus exam point, used to increase any passing grade earned from the course. The feedback system for course T-79.1002 opens Fri 3 March and closes Fri 17 Mar. The feedback system for course T-79.1001 opens Fri 5 May and closes Mon 22 May.

Summaries of feedback from previous courses: Autumn 2003 Spring 2003 Autumn 2002, Spring 2002.

Links

Some fun links that are related to the course contents, but not part of the official course material.

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Latest update: 31 July 2006. Pekka Orponen