18.404J | Fall 2020 | Undergraduate, Graduate

Theory of Computation

Calendar

SES # TOPICS KEY DATES
1 Introduction, Finite Automata, Regular Expressions  
2 Nondeterminism, Closure Properties, Regular Expressions → Finite Automata  
3 The Regular Pumping Lemma, Finite Automata → Regular Expressions, CFGs  
4 Pushdown Automata, CFG ↔ PDA  
5 The CF Pumping Lemma, Turing Machines Homework 1 due
6 TM Variants, the Church-Turing Thesis  
7 Decision Problems for Automata and Grammars  
8 Undecidability  
9 Reducibility Homework 2 due
10 The Computation History Method  
11 The Recursion Theorem and Logic  
12 Time Complexity Homework 3 due
13 Midterm Exam  
14 P and NP, SAT, Poly-time Reducibility  
15 NP-Completeness  
16 Cook-Levin Theorem Homework 4 due
17 Space Complexity, PSPACE, Savitch’s Theorem  
18 PSPACE-Completeness  
19 Games, Generalized Geography  
20 L and NL, NL = coNL Homework 5 due
21 Hierarchy Theorems  
22 Provably Intractable Problems, Oracles  
23 Probabilistic Computation, BPP  
24 Probabilistic Computation (cont.)  
25 Interactive Proof Systems, IP Homework 6 due
26 coNP ⊆ IP  
27 Final Exam  

Course Info

Learning Resource Types
Lecture Videos
Problem Sets
Exams
Lecture Notes
Instructor Insights