TAs: Yu Zhang, Alexei Nogin
Administrative assistant: Karla Consroe, Upson 5147, 255-9296, karla@cs.cornell.edu
Time and Location: MWF 9:05-9:55, Hollister 206
Text: Kozen, Automata and Computability, Springer, 1997
Office Hours:
Please use the course e-mail account cs481@cs.cornell.edu for all administrative, homework and course material questions. E-mail not sent there will be forwarded to that address, so sending your mail there directly will get you faster response time. Our personal e-mail addresses (which you should use only when necessary) are: Rubinfeld ronitt@cs.cornell.edu, Nogin nogin@cs.cornell.edu, Zhang yuzhang@cs.cornell.edu;
The course webpage is at http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Info/Courses/Current/CS481/home.html. All course information as well as announcements will be posted there.
We have a newsgroup cornell.class.cs481 for questions about course material. We will post any changes, corrections or advice about homework questions there. You are responsible for keeping tabs on this newsgroup.
Course content: The course will closely follow the text. We will cover most of the numbered subsections and some of the lettered subsections.
Prerequisites: CS 280 or permission of instructor. Students should be aware that this course requires a certain level of mathematical sophistication. Many of the problems assigned in this course will require a proof or some other kind of mathematical justification. Accordingly, students should be familiar with mathematical induction.
Academic Integrity: Students are allowed to collaborate on the homework to the extent of formulating ideas as a group. Each student is expected to write up the homework by himself or herself. Students must not hand in homework that represents somebody else's ideas entirely.
Homework policy: There will be homework assigned every week, due a week from the day it is handed out. Homeworks will only be accepted in class and on time. Late homework will receive a grade of zero. However, to cover cases of emergency or illness, up to two assignments will be accepted one lecture late (or one assignment two lectures late) without penalty. You do not need to inform me about late homeworks in advance or to give me any excuses. Excuses for late homeworks beyond the first two will not be accepted.
Here are some alternative places to turn in homeworks, for those of you that need to turn them in early: the undergraduate office in 303 Upson or my assistant Karla Consroe (5147 Upson). It is your responsibility to make sure they put a time/day stamp on it. If you need to be out of town, you may fax it in to the department office (607) 255-4428 (make sure to direct it to my attention).
Graded homeworks and exams not collected in class can be collected from Upson 303. Extra copies of all handouts will be available outside Upson 303.
Grading: Homeworks and exams will be weighted roughly as follows: Weekly homework sets 30%, Two midterm exams 20% each, final exam 30%.
381 vs. 481 CS381 and CS481 follow roughly the same syllabus, but 481 is more mathematically oriented. Grad students and undergrads bound for graduate school should take 481. Corrective shifting is encouraged in the first few weeks. If you are not sure which course is right for you, please come talk to either Prof. Lee or Prof. Rubinfeld.