| CS 420 |
| 2024fall |
| ibarland |
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ITEC420 is an introduction to the study of computability and formal languages. Topics include:
Office hours:
You don’t need an appointment to drop by during scheduled office hours.
Note that
Friday's hour is zoom-only,
and
MW are in the Center for the Sciences tentatively for now — if it changes,
I'll post on D2L.
These hours are in-person (except Friday);
if you want to join in zoom
you can email or text 832-655-5474,
but (alas) no promises that I'll notice in time, or remember.
These hours are subject to change;
see the class web page and/or the D2L discussion-board
for the most up-to-date times.
| Mon, Wed | 14:00–15:15 | Da230 |  |
| Tue | 15:30–16:30 | Da230 | |
| Fri | 13:00–14:30 | bit.ly/ibarland-zoom ONLY | |
| or email me some times that work better for you (incl. weekend zoom/discord chat, possibly). | |||
You are encouraged to post (and answer) questions on the D2L discussion board, since you might get another student’s ideas within a few minutes, instead of my response perhaps a day or more later. If your question would require giving away part the answer (e.g. part of your solution), just email me; please include “ITEC420” in the subject, thanks.
| Author: | Elaine A. Rich |
| Title: | Computability and Complexity: Theory and Applications | .
| Publisher: | Prentice Hall |
| Edition: | 1st ed |
| ISBN: |
Evaluation:
| Exams (2) & Quizzes | 50% |
| Homeworks | 50% |
Clarity counts in all work for this class (including spelling, grammar, and layout). You will likely hand-write parts of your homework. If electronic submission is required, please combine (scans/images of) your papers into a single pdf (not doc). Even when working by hand, you might find yourself re-copy/re-drawing diagrams for clarity, rather than submit your first paper attempt.
All submitted material (hardcopy or electronic) must contain both your name and the hw/quiz/exam-number near the top. All hardcopy submitted must be stapled.
Some students have enjoyed learning LaTeX, a typesetting language (which actually compiles to TeX, Knuth's powerful, Turing-Complete typesetting system for creating beautiful books). For practice and fun you can render online at arachnoid, quicklatex, and texrendr. Overleaf is a full-featured online system. Perhaps you'd also like TikZ (a LaTeX drawing package). One place to get a full TeX, LaTeX, and TikZ is from MikTeX. I have also used LyX (a WYSIWYM document processor for LaTeX). If you are an emacs user on the Mac, Aquamacs has good support for LaTeX; if you are a vim user on the mac, emacs can be configured with vim keybindings!
Homeworks may be spot-graded -- some problems graded in detail, others with a cursory ✓+ / ✓ / ✓- / 0. Some problems might be auto-graded (and perhaps not further examined), so be sure to use any function/program/type names specified in the homework. Programs will be graded not only for the extent to which they produce the required results, but also for good style. In particular, the code should be well designed, straightforward and use meaningful identifier names. Every function should have a purpose-statement, signature, and unit tests. A program which does not compile/run might summarily get a 0. (Beware making a last-moment change right before submitting, without verifying that it still passes all unit tests.)
There may be some short quizzes in class; fair game for these quizzes to include definitions and examples from the assigned reading, as well as any previous homework problems.
2024-Dec-10 (Tue) 14:45, as per the final exam schedule. In case of inclement weather, the university may postpone the exam to Friday.
Late Policy: If you know in advance you won’t be able to turn in homework on time (e.g. military duty, or university sports) you must get permission in advance to turn the homework in late. For significant illness, quaranting, or emotional crisis without advance notice, contact the professor as soon as possible to arrange to catch up on the work, and do not access any posted solutions or discuss with others if you are planning to ask to submit late work. Include a pledge statement to that effect at the top of any submitted-late work.
You may not:
You may:
Search the web for solutions to small coding tasks (1–3 lines) which are not the gist of the assignment.
(Even if finding code snippets on the web,
you must type them in yourself from memory, not copy/paste them.
This is to (a) help you process/think about the code you are typing,
and also (b) help keep you from inadvertently copying so much that you’d violate the honor policy.
If you think an exception is reasonable, check with the instructor (perhaps via the message-boards).)
For example, if the assignment is to write a CPU simulation, and happens to involve reading/writing a preferences file, you can certainly search up a sample program which opens a file, reads or writes the words "hello file", and then closes the file (catching any exceptions).
However, if one of the assignment’s problems is to write code which copies one file to another while filtering out all punctuation, up-casing all words, and adding a "#" in front of each numeral you should not search up a program which does all/most of that. (Combining samples that do each of these independently is fine.)
Again, the ultimate requirement is that everything you end up writing should be coming from your own understanding, (not just writing from short-term memory, what somebody else said would work).
If you aren’t sure whether a certain level of help is acceptable, or feel that an exception to these rules is reasonable, stop—don’t give/receive such help until you've clarified it with the instructor. (Starting assignments early enough can give you better opportunity to get help/clarification, should it be needed.)
Class Courtesy Please refrain from texting during lecture, and use a computer only for taking notes and looking up material related to lecture (e.g. looking up whether pushdown automata allow epsilon-transistions). Please do not: check texts, browse other sites, check your X/twitter feed, etc.. Other students can be distracted by your screen, and your inattentiveness detracts from the class experience for all.
Other University Resources: Radford has many resources to help you in different ways, including the student counseling services (x5226), and the Harvey Knowledge Center (“HKC”, formerly “LARC”, x7704, radford.edu/hkc ) including access to tutorTrac.
Students seeking academic accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act must register with RU's Center for Accessibility Services (CAS) in Russell Hall 301. Qualifying students should meet with me to arrange accommodations. For more information, call the CAS at 540-831-6350.
 This page licensed CC-BY 4.0 Ian Barland Page last generated | Please mail any suggestions (incl. typos, broken links) to ibarland  radford.edu |
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