CSE 725: Computability and Unsolvability

CSE 725:
Computability and Unsolvability

Description (from OSU Course Catalog)

Time and space measures; Turing machine variants and RAM's; universal Turing machines; undecidable language problems; development of efficient algorithms; NP-completeness.

Level and Credits

UG 3

Prerequisites

CSE 625

Quarters Offered

Winter, Spring

Objectives

Master application of and intuition about the Church-Turing Thesis
Master the use of techniques to prove certain problems undecidable
Master the use of polynomial time reductions to prove certain problems NP-complete
Be familiar with defining and developing formal models of computation
Be familiar with the time-based complexity classes P and NP

Texts

Michael Sipser, Introduction to the Theory of Computation, PWS Publishing Company, 2006, ISBN: 0-534-95097-3.

Topics

Topics	Readings
Turing Machines: basic definitions, examples, and variants; Church-Turing Thesis	Chapter 3
Examples of decidable language problems; undecidability of the Halting Problem	Chapter 4
More undecidable problems; many-one reductions; Rice's Theorem; Recursion Theorem	Chapter 5; Section 6.1
Complexity classes; P, NP, and the P=NP? Problem; NP-Completeness	Chapter 7

Grading Plan

Midterm Exam	35%
Final Exam	50%
Homework Assignments	15%