T-79.149 Discrete Structures (2 cr) P V

Autumn 2003

The course in Autumn 2003 is concerned with cellular automata (theory, applications and current research problems).

Time and place: Thursdays (September 11 - December 4) at 17-20 in TB353. The first seminar presentation is (already) on September 11. There is no session on November 13.

Teachers: Professor Emeritus Leo Ojala and Docent, D.Sc. (Tech.) Kimmo Varpaaniemi.

Course material:

• Max Garzon, Models of Massive Parallelism: Analysis of Cellular Automata and Neural Networks, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Germany, 1995, xiv+272 pp.
• Chapters 1-6 with notes (pp. 1-296, pp. 849-965), Chapters 10-11 with notes (pp. 547-714, pp. 1067-1123), and Index (63 pp., no pagination) in Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science, Wolfram Media, Champaign, IL, USA, 2002, xiv+2+1197+67 pp.
• Journal articles and/or conference papers and/or book chapters (apparently not very many) on cellular automata. Decisions concerning this material will be made during the course.

How to pass? You must have seminar presentations and solve exercise problems.

• The length of a single presentation and the number of presentations per student depend on the number of participants. If the number of participants remains very low, there is a possiblity to get additional credits via T-79.295 Individual Studies.
• Starting on September 18, a few exercise problems are specified per week (not necessarily every week). The deadline for answers is included in the specification, but there is usually 2 weeks time to prepare the answers. Each problem is worth of 6 points. The grade of the course is determined by the number of points obtained. (The scale won't be fixed beforehand.) However, the quality of work in the seminar may be taken into account in such a way that the the course grade is one more or one less than the ``exercise grade''.

Exercise problems so far (and their deadlines)

• Problems 2, 10, 15 and 21 in Garzon's Section 2.6, deadline on October 9, 2003, at 17:00. An epilogue (revised on November 17, 2003) is attached (Postscript, PDF).
• Attached Problems 1-4 (Postscript, PDF), deadline on October 16, 2003, at 17:00.
• Attached Problems 1-4 (Postscript, PDF), deadline on November 6, 2003, at 17:00.
• Attached Problems 1-4 (Postscript, PDF), deadline on November 20, 2003, at 17:00.
• Attached Problems 1-4 (Postscript, PDF), deadline on November 27, 2003, at 17:00.

Recent past of T-79.149: [Autumn 2001] [Spring 2001]