CS 3350: Automata, Computability, and Formal Languages

Dear all,

The course grades are now available.

Please email me if you would like to know your grade before it is posted on Goldmine.

Thanks a lot for a great semester! Happy Holidays!

Best,

Martine

Dear all,

Your final exam's grades will be ready tonight. Please email me if you would like to know your grade or stop by my office some time tomorrow.

Best,

Martine

Dear all,

Please be aware that if you have not submitted your project yet (individual and group), you only have a penalty of 35 points (5 points x 5 days + 10 points x 1 day).

Thanks for taking action now. Remember that if you fail the project, you fail the class.

Best,

Martine

Dear all,

This is to inform you that I will not hold an extra office hour tomorrow from 8 to 9am.

If you have questions, please do use Piazza to ask them or come by my office on Monday morning: I will have office hours from 8am to 10am.

Best,

Martine

Dear all,

You might want to practice as much as possible to be ready for your final exam.

Although it is by no mean an indication of what will be at your exam next week, I just posted the final exam I gave last semester. That will at least give you an indication of skills you are expected to have.

Best,

Martine

The teaching staff has posted a new material_from_previous_semesters resource.

Title: cs3350spring2014finalexamscanned.pdf

You can view it on the course page: https://piazza.com/utep/fall2014/cs3350/resources

Dear all,

This is a friendly reminder that the final exam for CS3350 will be held next Wednesday (December 10) from 10am to 12:45pm in the usual classroom.

In case you cannot make it, I need to know it as soon as possible (by Friday December 5 at noon) to accommodate another exam date. Failing to let me know will compromise your chances to be offered a make-up exam.

Best,

Martine

Dear all,

This is a friendly reminder that your second exam is scheduled to be held on Monday November 24.

The topics are as follow:

* All about regular languages:

  - being able to define finite automata

  - understanding and being able to articulate the fact that Reg. languages are closed under a given set of operations

  - understanding a regular expression

  - building an NFA from a regular expression (following procedures presented in class), building a DFA from an NFA, and minimizing a DFA

  - identifying a language from a DFA

  - understanding and being able to articulate why a Reg. language can be "pumped"

  - being able to use the pumping lemma to disprove that a language is regular

* Context-free languages:

  - being able to identify a grammar that recognizes a given language

  - being able to define a context-free grammar and a PDA

  - being able to trace the execution of a given PDA on a given input string

  - being able, given a context-free grammar, to simulate the execution of the corresponding PDA on a given string

  - understanding and being able to articulate why a Context Free language can be "pumped"

  - being able to give an intuitive explanation (based on the pumping lemma for CFL) about why a language is not a CFL 

  - being able to explain why CF languages are closed under some operations but not under others

* Turing machines:

  - being able to define a Turing machine

  - being able to trace the execution of a Turing machine

  - being able to informally describe how you would use a Turing machine to solve a simple problem

Good luck with all of that. I am at your disposal, would you need any help with any of this material before the exam.

Best,

Martine