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Lecture 1

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21 views

Lecture 1

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moses4yao
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Introduction to Automata

Theory

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What is Automata Theory?
 Study of abstract computing devices, or
“machines”
 Automaton = an abstract computing device
 Note: A “device” need not even be a physical
hardware!
 A fundamental question in computer science:
 Find out what different models of machines can do
and cannot do
 The theory of computation
 Computability vs. Complexity

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(A pioneer of automata theory)

Alan Turing (1912-1954)


 Father of Modern Computer
Science
 English mathematician
 Studied abstract machines called
Turing machines even before
computers existed
 Heard of the Turing test?

3
Theory of Computation: A
Historical Perspective
1930s • Alan Turing studies Turing machines
• Decidability
• Halting problem
1940-1950s • “Finite automata” machines studied
• Noam Chomsky proposes the
“Chomsky Hierarchy” for formal
languages
1969 Cook introduces “intractable” problems
or “NP-Hard” problems
1970- Modern computer science: compilers,
computational & complexity theory evolve
4
Languages & Grammars
 Languages: “A language is a
Or “words” collection of sentences of
finite length all constructed
from a finite alphabet of
symbols”
 Grammars: “A grammar can
be regarded as a device that
enumerates the sentences
of a language” - nothing
more, nothing less

 N. Chomsky, Information and


Control, Vol 2, 1959

Image source: Nowak et al. Nature, vol 417, 2002


5
The Chomsky Hierachy
• A containment hierarchy of classes of formal languages

Regular Context-
(DFA) Context-
free Recursively-
sensitive
(PDA) enumerable
(LBA)
(TM)

6
The Central Concepts of
Automata Theory

7
Alphabet
An alphabet is a finite, non-empty set of
symbols
 We use the symbol ∑ (sigma) to denote an

alphabet
 Examples:
 Binary: ∑ = {0,1}
 All lower case letters: ∑ = {a,b,c,..z}
 Alphanumeric: ∑ = {a-z, A-Z, 0-9}
 DNA molecule letters: ∑ = {a,c,g,t}
 …

8
Strings
A string or word is a finite sequence of symbols
chosen from ∑
 Empty string is  (or “epsilon”)

 Length of a string w, denoted by “|w|”, is


equal to the number of (non- ) characters in the
string
 E.g., x = 010100 |x| = 6
 x = 01  0  1  00  |x| = ?

 xy = concatentation of two strings x and y


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Powers of an alphabet
Let ∑ be an alphabet.

 ∑k = the set of all strings of length k

 ∑* = ∑0 U ∑1 U ∑2 U …

 ∑+ = ∑ 1 U ∑ 2 U ∑ 3 U …

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Languages
L is a said to be a language over alphabet ∑, only if L  ∑*
 this is because ∑* is the set of all strings (of all possible
length including 0) over the given alphabet ∑
Examples:
1. Let L be the language of all strings consisting of n 0’s
followed by n 1’s:
L = {, 01, 0011, 000111,…}
2. Let L be the language of all strings of with equal number of
0’s and 1’s:
L = {, 01, 10, 0011, 1100, 0101, 1010, 1001,…}
Canonical ordering of strings in the language

Definition: Ø denotes the Empty language


 Let L = {}; Is L=Ø?
NO
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Summary
 Automata theory & a historical perspective
 Chomsky hierarchy
 Finite automata
 Alphabets, strings/words/sentences, languages

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