INFORMATION CSC 527: Theory of Computing, Spring 2006 Victor J. Milenkovic COURSE URL: http://www.cs.miami.edu --> follow links to Victor Milenkovic COURSE EMAIL: csc527@mail.cs.miami.edu (from anywhere) csc527@mail.cs (from UM) csc527@mail (from CS) csc527 (from the Linux Lab) Mail to csc527 is forwarded to instructor, assistants, and the all the students in the class. There is extra credit (and a good feeling) for helping your fellow student, but please reply to or cc the csc527 account--or you won't get credit. INSTRUCTOR: Professor Victor J. Milenkovic Ungar 433A, 284-2268, vjm@cs.miami.edu SYSADMIN: Irina Kaliman Ungar 427, 284-2272, irina@cs.miami.edu TEACHING ASST: ?? What do I need to do? 1. Buy the textbook: Introduction to the Theory of Computation, Second Edition Michael Sipser ISBN: 0-534-95097-3 =A9 2006 Publish date: February 15, 2005 400 pages Hardcover 2. Get your lab account ASAP, and READ YOUR EMAIL frequently. I will announce assignments by email and put them in the course WEB site. Your userid should be ``vjmi527''. Your initial password is vjmi1234, where 1234 are the last four digits of your student ID. 2. Do assigned work: reading, problems, programming. 3. Do you reading before lecture. Attend lecture. Ask questions about what you don't understand. 4. Read email FREQUENTLY. If you like, copies of all course mail can be sent to your course account AND forwarded to your student account. See Irina's web page for instructions how to do this. What will I learn? What is computation: recognizing languages. What is impossible. What is possible but takes a long time. Applications along the way: text search, finding patterns in text, XML. What do I need to know? MTH 309 Discrete Math. What if I have questions? 1. Send email to the csc527 course account. (This is MUCH more reliable than calling me.) I am often logged in late at night. You will often be surprised at how quickly you get an answer. 2. Ask at the BEGINNING of lecture. 3. See me or one of the TAs. We will put our office hours on the WEB site. What is the deal with the lab? The Linux Lab is a collection of 26 Linux UNIX workstations in rooms CC426 and CC406 (Ungar Building) plus a file server workstation. It belongs to the Department of Computer Science. This lab provide an up-to-date computing environment to teach computer science courses. This lab is *not* the same as the computers on floors 1-3 of the Ungar Building. These belong to the Department of Information Technology These computers provide ``email accounts'' and accounts for non-CS courses. How can I access the lab? Read Irina's web page. How will I be graded? 50% assignments (programs and problem sets) 10% quizzes 10% midterm 30% final There is a 5% bonus on an assignment if you are the first person (according to email time-stamp) to report an significant error in the assignment or in the solution handed out to an assignment. The professor defines the word ``significant''. (Spelling mistakes are not significant.) What about late work and extensions? Nope. Can we work together? You have freedom of speech, but any sort of copying is a violation of the honor code. Working together can be very helpful to the learning experience. However, if the arrangement is lopsided and information is flowing in one direction only, then you are violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the honor code. If you rely too much on another student, at best you are not learning anything, and at worst you are learning the wrong thing.