1. THEORY OF COMPUTATION
06 NUMBER OF STATES

2. IMPORTANT
The number of distinct states the finite state machine needs in order to recognize a language is related to the number of distinct strings that must be distinguished from each other.

3. EXAMPLE (0+1)*(000+111)(0+1)* q4 q5 q0 q1 q2 q3 11 011011 00011 1 1 1
0,1 1 1 q0 q1 q2 q3
011010
00110

4. DISTINGUISHABLE Definition
Let L be a language in *. Two strings x and y in * are distinguishable with respect to L if there is a string z in * so that exactly one of the strings xz and yz is in L. The string z is said to distinguish x and y with respect to L.

5. DISTINGUISHABLE Definition
Let L be a language in *. Two strings x and y in * are distinguishable with respect to L if L/x ≠ L/y where
L/x = { z  * | xz  L }
L/y = { z  * | yz  L }.

6. EXAMPLE
Let  = { 0, 1 }. Let L be the language associated with (0+1)*10. Two strings x = and y = 010 in *. Since there is a string z = 0 in * such that xz = is in L but yz = 0100 is not in L, x and y are distinguishable with respect to L. We may say that x and y are indistinguishable with respect to L if there is no such string z. The strings 0 and 100 are indistinguishable with respect to L.

7. LEMMA
Suppose that L  *, and M = (Q,,q0,A,). If x and y are two strings in * for which *(q0,x) = *(q0,y) then x and y are indistinguishable with respective to L. Note: *(q0,x)= qj means that there is a path from q0 to qj with respect to x, *(q0,x) = ((…((q0,x1),x2),…),xj) = qj where x = x1x2…xj.

8. THEOREM
Suppose that L  *, and for some positive integer n, there are n strings in *, any two of which are distinguishable with respect to L. Then there can be no finite state machine recognizing L with fewer than n states.

9. THEOREM
PALINDROME language over the alphabet {0,1} cannot be accepted by any finite automaton. Proof: Any two strings in {0,1}* are distinguishable with respect to PALINDROME language.

10. EXERCISE
How many pair-wise distinguished strings are there with respect to the following languages:
Language of all bit strings, not containing any double characters.
Language of all bit strings, ending with at least 3 zeroes.