Syllabus: CSE 5610 Computational Complexity Spring 2003

Class Times: Tuesday and Thursday from 5:00 to 6:15 in Q-18

Instructor: William D. Shoaff, 252 Olin Engineering Complex Telephone (321) 768-8000 (8066).

Office Hours

See http://www.cs.fit.edu/wds/classes/office.html or by electronic mail wds@cs.fit.edu, or by appointment.

Textbook: Computational Complexity, Christos Papadimitriou, Addison-Wesley, (ISBN 0-201-53082-1) 1994. On line information on this text is available at
http://heg-school.aw.com/cseng/authors/papadimitriou/complex/complex.html.

Grading:

Project 100 points

Final exam 150 points

Homework 150 points

Total points 400 points

Letter grades will be assigned according to the following scale:

A=90 - 100%     B=80 - 89%     C=70 - 79% F=0 - 69%

Content: Two fundamental questions in theoretical computer science are concerned with computability and complexity: ``What problems can computer solve?'' and ``What resources (time and space) are used for problems that can be solved?'' We are interested in characterizing the answers to each of these questions. The first question has a definitive answer, while the answer to the second is more elusive; it revolves around the $P\stackrel{?}{=} NP$ question.

Homework: Problems will be provided for practice in solving problems related to computational complexity. Students are encouraged to know how to correctly work all problems. Selected problems will be collected for grading. The notes and problems section at the end of each chapter in the text provides valuable reading. The instructor is available for help.

Projects: A project will be assigned.

Overview of Topics: An overview of topics is available at URL

http://www.cs.fit.edu/wds/classes/complexity/overview.

Important dates:

• University administrative events
  • January 8, 2003: classes begin
  • January 14, 2003: Last day to register and add a class
  • January 21, 2003: Last day to drop a class without receiving a 'W'
  • February 19-23,2003: Homecoming
  • February 28, 2003: Last day to drop a class with W
  • April 26, 2003: Last day of classes
  • February 3, 2003: Registration for Summer 2003 begins
  • March 31, 2003: Registration for Fall 2003 begins
  • Aprir 28 - May 3, 2003: Final exams
  • May 3, 2003: Commencement
• Class assignments and exams
  • Final Exam: Tuesday, April 29, 6:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m.
• Holidays
  • March 3-7: Spring break
  • Other Holidays (not officially observed by Florida Tech):
    • Monday, January 20, 2003: Martin Luther King Day
    • Saturday, February 1, 2003: Chinese New Year (Gui-Wei)
    • Sunday, February 2, 2003: Groundhog Day
    • Friday, February 14, 2003: Valentine's Day
    • Monday, February 17, 2003: President's Day
    • Wednesday, March 5, 2003: Islamic New Year 1424
    • Wednesday, March 5, 2003: Ash Wednesday
    • Monday, March 17, 2003: St. Patrick's Day
    • Thursday, March 20, 2003: Vernal Equinox 8:00pm (EST)
    • Tuesday, April 1, 2003: April Fools' Day
    • Sunday, April 6, 2003: Daylight Savings Time Begins 2:00am (EST)
    • Thursday, April 17, 2003: Passover
    • Friday, April 18, 2003: Good Friday
    • Sunday, April 20, 2003: Easter Sunday
    • Sunday, May 11, 2003: Mother's Day

Joint Work: The goal of homework is to master the material. This can often best be accomplished by working with others. If you do study with others, you owe it to yourself and your group to spend time trying to solve each problem prior to meeting with the group. You must write up solutions by yourself without assistance, this includes any code you may write. You must also identify collaborators on all assignments. If you obtain a solution through research, provide a citation of your source. Absolutely no collaboration is allowed on exams. Plagiarism and other anti-intellectual behavior will not be tolerated.

Bibliography

A.41

Church A.
The calculi of lambda-conversion.
Annals of Mathematical Studies, 1941.
[Advanced].

Cho59

Noam Chomsky.
On certain formal properties of grammars.
Information and Control, 2:137-167, 1959.

Coo71

Stephen A. Cook.
The complexity of theorem-proving procedures.
Proceedings of the 3rd Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, pages 151-158, 1971.

Dav82

Martin Davis.
Computability and Unsolvability.
Dover, 1982.

DH76

W. Diffie and M. Hellman.
New directions in cryptography.
IEEE Transaction on Information Theory, 22(6):644-654, November 1976.

DSW94

Martin D. Davis, Ron Sigal, and Elaine J. Weyuker.
Computability, Complexity, and Languages.
Academic Press, 2nd edition, 1994.

EC89

Richard L. Epstein and Walter A. Carnielli.
Computability: Computable Functions, Logic, and the Foundations of Mathematics.
Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole, 1989.

FB94

Robert W. Floyd and Richard Beigel.
The Language of Machines: An Introduction to Computability and Formal Languages.
Computer Science Press, 1994.

GJ79

Michael R. Garey and David S Johnson.
Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of Intractability.
W. H. Freeman, 1979.

Kar72

R. M. Karp.
Reducibility among combinatorial problems.
In J. W. Thatcher and R. E. Miller, editors, Complexity of Computer Computations, pages 85-103. Plenum Press, New York, 1972.
[Advanced].

Kar86

Richard M. Karp.
Combinatorics, complexity, and randomness.
Communications of the ACM, 29(2):98-111, February 1986.

Kle36

S. C. Kleene.
General recursive function of natural numbers.
Mathematische Annalen, 112:727-742, 1936.
[Advanced].

KR81

R. M. Karp and M. O. Rabin.
Efficient randomized pattern-matching algorithms.
Technical Report Technical Report TR-31-81, Aiken Computer Laboratory, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1981.

Pap94

Christos H. Papadimitriou.
Computational Complexity.
Addison-Wesley, 1994.

Pos36

E. Post.
Finite combinatory processes: Formulation i.
Journal of Symbolic Logic, 1:103-105, 1936.
[Advanced].

Rab77

Michael O. Rabin.
Complexity and computations.
Communications of the ACM, 20(9):625-633, September 1977.

SA91

V. Sperschnider and G. Antoniou.
Logic: A Foundation for Computer Science.
Addison-Wesley, 1991.

Sav98

John E. Savage.
Models of Computation: Exploring the Power of Computing.
Addison-Wesley, 1998.

Sco77

Dana S. Scott.
Logic and programming languages.
Communications of the ACM, 20(9):634-641, September 1977.

Tur36

Alan M. Turing.
On computable numbers, with an application to the entscheidungsproblem.
Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, 2(42):230-265, 1936.

Wil86

Herbert S. Wilf.
Algorithms and Complexity.
Prentice-Hall, 1986.

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