This course gives students an introduction of the theory of computability, by extending knowledge of the theory of automata and language. This course mainly employs the model of the Turing machine. Students will learn the basic notion of computability on the Turing machine, which provides mathematical properties on the software and hardware of computers. The topics studied in this course include the Turing machine, the Church-Turing thesis, variations of the Turing machine, decidability, diagonal arguments, halting problems, reducibility, the Post correspondence problem, and the recursion theorem.
By the end of this course, students will be able to understand:
1) notions of computability
2) the model of the Turing machine and its variations
3) techniques for the proofs of computability.
Computation, Computability, the Turing machine, the Church-Turing thesis, variations of the Turing machine, decidability, diagonal arguments, halting problems, reducibility, the Post correspondence problem, the recursion theorem
✔ Specialist skills | Intercultural skills | Communication skills | ✔ Critical thinking skills | ✔ Practical and/or problem-solving skills |
The course consists of a standard lecture or practice exercise. A practice exercise includes supplementary materials and answers for the quizzes. Each class also includes quizzes on the contents of this class or previous classes.
Course schedule | Required learning | |
---|---|---|
Class 1 | Introduction, computation and computability, Turing machine I | Understand the notion of the Turing machine |
Class 2 | Turing machine II, the Church-Turing thesis, variations of the Turing machine I | Understand the content of the Church-Turing thesis |
Class 3 | Variations of the Turing machine II | Understand the method on the proof for the equivalence on the variations |
Class 4 | Exercise-style lecture on the Turing machine and its variations | Understand the properties of the variations of the Turing machine |
Class 5 | Decidability | Understand the method for the proofs on decidability |
Class 6 | The diagonal arguments, the halting problem | Understand the application of the diagonal arguments |
Class 7 | Reducibility | Understand the notion of reducibility |
Class 8 | Exercise-style lecture on decidability and reducibility | Understand the methods on reducibility |
Class 9 | Undecidability on language theory | Understand the methods for the proofs |
Class 10 | The Post correspondence problem | Understand the problem and its reducibility |
Class 11 | Mapping reducibility | Understand the notion of mapping reducibility |
Class 12 | The recursion theorem | Understand the argument of the proof |
Class 13 | Exercise-style lecture on mapping reducibility and the recursion theorem | Understand the methods on mapping reducibility |
Class 14 | Introduction to the complexity theory | Understand the basic notion of computational complexity |
Class 15 | Advanced topics | Understand the advanced topics |
Introduction to the Theory of Computation, Second Edition, Michael Sipser, Thomson Course Technology, 2005, ISBN 978-0534-95097-2.
References will be announced in the first class.
The evaluation consists of in-class quizzes (60%) and the final exam (40%).
It is preferable to have the knowledge on the basics of algorithms and data structures and on the theory of automata and languages.