1. The Theory of Computation
Kun-Mao Chao (趙坤茂)
National Taiwan University

2. About this course
Course: The Theory of Computation (限在職專班生選修; This evening class is for part-time students of 在職專班 only.)
Fall semester, 2012
18: :15 Tuesday, R439 CSIE Building.
3 credits
Web site:
Instructor: Kun-Mao Chao (趙坤茂)
Teaching assistant: Chia-Jung Chang (張家榮)

3. Topics Sets, Relations, Languages Finite Automata
Context-free Languages
Turing Machines
Undecidability
Computational Complexity
NP-completeness
Related Topics

4. Grading policy Homework assignments and Class participation (15%)
Two midterm exams (70%; 35% each):
Midterm #1: Oct. 30, 2012 (tentative)
Midterm #2: Dec. 11, 2012 (tentative)
Oral presentation of selected papers/topics (15%)

5. Textbook Elements of the Theory of Computation, Second Edition
by Harry R. Lewis and Christos H. Papadimitriou, Prentice-Hall, 1998.

6. ISAAC 2012
The 23rd International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2012) will be held at NTU on Dec Please attend the reception in the evening of Dec. 18.

7. Top ten reasons for taking this class
10. You may bring your dinner to the class as long as it is not stinky and you clean up your table afterwards. 9. A good mental exercise. 8. To learn more about theoretical computer science. 7. To sharpen your skills in proving theorems. 6. To learn more about computation.

8. Top ten reasons for taking this class
5. To improve your programming ability. 4. To participate in an international event. 3. To figure out your potential that you never knew. 2. To get inspired. 1. You tell me!

9. Tonight’s outlook
Let’s go for a walk – a nice way to have insight into challenging problems.
In tonight’s walk, we discussed the question “How many ways can one partition a set of n elements?”
Here is the answer. (Bell number)
Here is a note that I wrote next morning.