Week 7

Goals

The main goals for Week 7 are to:

  • Understand the proof that Regular Expressions are equivalent in power to Deterministic Finite Automata. This is a long proof, split over 4 videos, but is something we hope everyone understands in detail. The methods used in the proof are similar to ones we have seen before in showing equivalence of NAND-Circ and Boolean circuits, but is a fair bit more complex. This general method of showing equivalence is something we will see again in this class, and you will encounter many more times in other classes and work that you will do.

  • Become familiar with the power and strangeness of nondeterminism. For finite automata, we prove this week that despite is seeming super-power, nondeterministic finite automata cannot compute any functions (or recognize any languages) that cannot be computed by deterministic finite automata. The main topic for Weeks 8-11 will be considering this question for more powerul computing models (which is the most famous open problem in computer science).

Schedule

The schedule is identical to previous weeks, and repeated here (with updated dates).

Day "Tuesday" Cohort "Wednesday" Cohort "Thursday" Cohort "Friday" Cohort "Sunday" Cohort "Monday" Cohort
Wed 7 Oct Preparation (Week 6) (Week 6) (Week 6) (Week 6) (Week 6)
Thu 8 Oct Preparation Preparation (Week 6) (Week 6) (Week 6) (Week 6)
Fri 9 Oct Preparation Preparation Preparation (Week 6) (Week 6) (Week 6)
Sat/Sun 10/11 Oct Cohort Meeting Preparation Preparation Preparation (Week 6) (Week 6)
Mon 12 Oct Preparation Cohort Meeting Preparation Preparation Preparation (Week 6)
Tue 13 Oct Assessed Cohort Meeting Preparation Cohort Meeting Preparation Preparation Preparation
Wed 14 Oct Write-up Due Assessed Cohort Meeting Preparation Cohort Meeting Preparation Preparation
Thu 15 Oct Week 8 Write-up Due Assessed Cohort Meeting Preparation Cohort Meeting Preparation
Fri 16 Oct Week 8 Week 8 Write-up Due Assessed Cohort Meeting Preparation Cohort Meeting
Sat/Sun 17/18 Oct Week 8 Week 8 Week 8 Write-up Due Assessed Cohort Meeting Preparation
Mon 19 Oct Week 8 Week 8 Week 8 Week 8 Write-up Due Assessed Cohort Meeting
Tue 20 Oct Week 8 Week 8 Week 8 Week 8 Week 8 Write-up Due

Cohort Problems

These are the problems you should discuss in your Cohort Meeting, and everyone in your cohort should be prepared to present and discuss solutions to at the Assessed Cohort Meeting:

Cohort Problems for Week 7 [PDF]

The problems are posted here and we think its a good idea to look at them early, but you’re not expected to be able to solve them until after doing the readings and watching the videos below.

After the Assessed Cohort Meeting, your Cohort Leader will select one problem that your cohort needs to write-up and submit. The write-up is due by 11:59pm on the day after your assessed cohort meeting (see the schedule above).

Problem Set 7 Template [zip].

Reading

This week continues with the material in Chapter 6: Functions with Infinite domains, Automata, and Regular expressions that we started on last week.

Section 6.4.2 of the book includes a proof that regular expressions are equivalent in power to deterministic finite automata, but it is quite different from the proof we do in the videos. Ambitious students are encouraged to understand both proofs, and to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the approach taken in the book compared to our approach (which is the one done more traditionally in theory of computation courses, at least going back to Mike Sipser’s courses in the 1980s).

There are many books (and other videos) that do present material similar to what is in the videos this week, but we are not assigning any additional readings.

Videos

You can play all the videos using this playlist, but don’t forget to take breaks: Week 7 Playlist

These videos are edited from these cs3102 classes (we don't generally recommend watching the unedited versions, but they are available if you want to):

Warm-Up: Complementing the XOR Language (5:54)

Equivalence of Regular Expressions and FSAs (6:12)

Breaktime

Proving FSAs are as Powerful as Regular Expressions (Part 1: Proof Strategy) (4:35)

Proving FSAs are as Powerful as Regular Expressions (Part 2: Bases, Union) (22:55)

Breaktime

Nondeterminism (11:14)

Nondeterministic Finite Automata (NFAs) (13:48)

Breaktime

Equivalence of NFAs and DFAs (10:01)

Proving FSAs are as Powerful as Regular Expressions (Part 3: Concatenation) (14:58)

Proving FSAs are as Powerful as Regular Expressions (Part 4: Kleene Star) (8:21)