Computer Science 311 - Theory of Computation
Fall
2015
01
4.00
Audrey St. John
TTH 10:00AM-11:15AM;F 10:00AM-10:50AM
Mount Holyoke College
92876
Kendade 303;Kendade 303
astjohn@mtholyoke.edu
Are there any limits to what computers can do? Does the answer to this question depend on whether you use a PC or a Mac? Is C more powerful than PASCAL? This seminar explores these questions by investigating several models of computation, illustrating the power and limitations of each of these models, and relating them to computational problems and applications. Topics include finite state automata, pushdown automata, grammars, Turing machines, the Universal Turing Machine, and computability.
Prereq: Computer Science 201 and Mathematics 232.