CS 373: Theory of Computation


Resources

Textbooks

There is no required textbook, but the following two are recommended. Our notation and approach will stay close to the Sipser textbook.

M. Sipser, Introduction to the Theory of Computation, 2nd Edition, Course Technology, 2006.

J. Hopcroft and J. Ullman, Introduction to Automata Theory. Languages and Computation, Addison-Wesley, 1979 (or the 2nd Edition, 2001, by J. Hopcroft, R. Motwani, and J. Ullman).


Other Courses

Previous semesters where course notes and practice problems can be found:

Newsgroup

The class newsgroup is class.su11.cs373.

You should frequently use the newsgroup for questions and discussions. The staff will monitor the newsgroup and help answer questions. We encourage you to discuss problems with other students here, but please do not post any part of any solutions to a problem (that would be considered as a form of academic misconduct). Postings regarding the definitions and problem formulation are acceptable. The newsgroup can also serve as an opportunity for students to give constructive feedback to the staff in the way the course is being handled. Constructive comments and suggestions that are posted by students could help improve the learning experience for everyone.

To access the newsgroup, go to http://news.cs.illinois.edu.


LaTeX

This is the easiest way to make beautiful typeset mathematics. The LaTeX source files will be made available for each homework, for your convenience.

Information about installing LaTeX can be found here. The installation procedures and available GUI software vary depending on the system that you use.

Here are the files from a LaTeX introduction that Lucas gave in CS173 Fall 2009 with David Morrison (certainly all the typos are Lucas'):

Some useful links:

Search around for other IDEs, WYSIWYG interfaces, and resources. There are tons!

Assorted Related Topics

Various automata: Other articles: