VIU — CSCI 320

Instructor

Timetable

Times listed are for Spring 2021 Semester dates Jan 7–Apr 16.

• Lectures: Tuesdays and Thursdays 10:00 am–11:30 pm
• Labs:
  • (N01) Fridays 9:30 am–10:30 am
  • (N02) Fridays 10:30 am–11:30 am

Prerequisites

• MATH 123
• CSCI 260 (C minimum)

Course Description

A survey of formal models and results that form the theoretical foundation of computer science. Typical topics include finite automata, Turing machines, simple undecidable problems, context-free languages, grammars and elementary computational complexity.

Materials

Textbook

• Introduction to the Theory of Computation (3rd ed.), Michael Sipser, 2013
  ISBN: 978-1-133-18779-0
  Digital copy available through the VIU Bookstore.

Resources

You will need a laptop/desktop with an Internet connection to be able to access your lab account using SSH. Lab computers will have g++ compiler installed within Debian 10 which supports up to C++14 standard.

Installing your own software to develop with C++ will be dependent on the operating system with your personal computer. Contact me for help if you need support. There will be some programming aspects in addition to mostly working on paper with proof.

Schedule

Rough draft of schedule

Assessment

Less than 50% earned in the final exam will result in failure of the course regardless of total accumulated course percentage.

TBD

Grading

The following grades are earned from the total of your assessments. In rare cases where assessments are re-evaluated, adjustments will be applied to coursework across all students.

Policy and Guidelines

Late Assignments: one day late with 10% penalty, and no submission after one day late will be accepted unless due to illness or support as registered with DAS.

Feedback and Corrections: The feedback given on assignments and midterms are meant to help you make improvements in your efforts. Therefore, any appeals to marks must be made within one week of receiving feedback and marks. Requests should be sent by email with an explanation why regrading is needed. In general, the following should have been done as part of justification for an appeal:

• a record of notes with written questions as evidence of progress;
• a record of helpful VIU services, such as notes from visiting:
  • CSCI Discord Server #helpcentre channel,
  • Success Coach,
  • the Math Learning Centre,
  • the Writing Centre,
  • see What is open/closed at VIU?
• a record of asking questions that demonstrate your efforts before submitting your work.

Attendance: The plan for Spring 2021 Semester is to teach remotely. Lectures and labs will have recorded video asynchronously available during the times given in the timetable, and labs will have synchronous Zoom meetings. My lectures will be using programs such as Blender and Photoshop, not simply projector slides.

Academic Integrity: Work must be your own, not have been submitted for other courses, and give proper citation where needed. In any case, first instance of plagiarism will typically result in a zero on the work under assessment (except for clear instances of it simply being a mistake, e.g.: one sentence quote and forgetting attribution) with a report sent to the department chair, and any further instance will likely result in failure of the course. Disciplinary action of misconduct is noted on your academic record and affects outcome of further misconduct instances. The department chair has the authority to take additional disciplinary action (see Policy 96.01).

Examples of academic misconduct summarized from one of the courses of the CSCI Department Chair, Sarah Carruthers (but not listing all kinds of misconduct, and note square brackets denote my own additional information):

• copying coursework from another student;
• allowing another student to copy from your coursework;
• submitting work after already submitting it previously for a different past assessment;
• allowing or paying another to complete and/or submit coursework on your behalf;
• using sources of materials for assessment purposes that either break copyright (past documents created by instructors, but not distributed by their consent) [or generates a major portion of the work submitted];
• omitting proper citation(s), even for paraphrasing (unless the information is common knowledge; [in other words, known by almost everyone inside and outside your discipline]).