Computer Science 291: Models of Computation

Professor: Dr. Alan Garvey

Section 1: MWF 8:30-9:20am VH 1236

Office Hours

• See my schedule.

Syllabus

The course syllabus is available online.

Books

There is one required textbooks for this class:

• Discrete Structures, Logic, and Computability by James L. Hein, Fourth Edition, Jones & Bartlett Publishers, 2017.
• An online Prolog book by Hein will also be helpful:
  • Prolog Lab Book

Prolog Environment

You can install the Prolog environment that we will use in class by going to SWI Prolog. You want the latest Stable release. Versions are available for most computing environments. This software is already installed on the Truman Student image, meaning on pretty much every Windows computer available to students on campus.

We will do relatively little with this and not until later in the semester, so installing this does not need to be an immediate priority.

LaTex Information

We will be using LaTex to format homework problems for submission. Here are some online resources to help with that.

• A short guide to LaTeX. Start here if you're completely unfamiliar with LaTeX. Also start here to refresh yourself on the basics if you're rusty.
• A longer guide to LaTeX, with much more detail than the short guide.
• You can download MikTeX and install MikTeX on your own (Windows) computer. From this page choose Download MikTeX 2.9 from the left menu, then choose what you want to install. MikTeX is installed on all Truman Windows computers.
• Another way to use LaTeX is Overleaf which is a WYSIWYG editor that lets you type in LaTeX and immediately see the results.
• Tom Schneider's incredibly complete resource page for biologists has endless help for non-biologists also.
• A page with lots of LaTeX math symbols is also available. If you can't find the symbol you want on this page, then you probably don't really want that symbol.
• TeX Resources on the Web
  A comprehensive listing of TeX and LaTeX resources.

Useful files

• Section 6.1 lecture slides
• Section 6.2 lecture slides
• Section 6.3 lecture slides
• Section 6.2 practice questions
• Section 7.1 lecture slides
• Section 7.2 lecture slides
• Section 7.3 lecture slides
• Section 7.4 lecture slides
• Section 8.1 lecture slides
• Section 8.3 lecture slides
• Section 8.3b lecture slides
• Section 3.3 lecture slides
• Section 11.1 lecture slides
• Section 11.2 lecture slides
• Section 11.3 lecture slides
• Section 11.4 lecture slides

Example Code

Exams

• There will be three exams during class time, plus a comprehensive final
• Exam One Terms and Concepts - Know these for Exam One, which is Friday, 17 February 2023
• Exam Two Terms and Concepts - Know these for Exam Two, which is Monday, 27 March 2023

Programming Assignments:

• There may be one or two Prolog assignments during the semester.

Homework Assignments:

• There will be 8 to 10 homework assignments during the semester.
• LaTeX Review is the Introduction to LaTeX lab that I use in CS 191. Those unfamiliar with LaTeX might want to work through it. It is NOT required for this class.
• Homework 1 Assigned: 25 January 2023, Due: 3 February 2023
• Homework 2 Assigned: 3 February 2023, Due: 13 February 2023
• Homework 3 Assigned: 13 February 2023, Due: 22 February 2023
• Homework 4 Assigned: 22 February 2023, Due: 3 March 2023
• Homework 5 Assigned: 3 March 2023, Due: 22 March 2023
• Homework 6 Assigned: 22 March 2023, Due: 31 March 2023