CS351 Midterm Problems
The midterm is open book and open notes. You are free to use a
calculator or any other computing devices you feel may be useful as long as you are not communicating with other people or searching online. Since
this test covers so much material I have decided to tell you specific types of
problems that will be on the exam so that you can direct your studies
appropriately. The exam covers the material up to P/NP, but does not include
the P/NP material.
- Create a DFA based on a problem description
- Convert an NFA (either regular or epsilon) to a DFA
- Turn a DFA into a regular expression.
- Generate a regular expression given a description of
the language.
- Generate a context-free grammar given a description
of the language.
- Use the pumping lemma to show that a language is
either not regular or not context free
- Describe a Turing Machine given a description of the language
- And some short-answer questions that could cover anything :-) But
will mostly focus on theory as opposed to a problem to work through (e.g. why
properties of the pumping lemma hold,
decidability and undecidable problems, etc.)
A Sample Midterm is available to give you an idea of the types of problems to expect.