Computer Science 311 - Theory of Computation
Spring
2018
01
4.00
Audrey St. John
MW 11:00AM-12:15PM;F 11:00AM-11:50AM
Mount Holyoke College
102508
Clapp Laboratory 218;Clapp Laboratory 218
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: COMSC-201 and MATH-232.