Introduction to Formal Languages and Automata Theory

Lecture, four hours; discussion, two hours; outside study, six hours. Enforced requisite: course 180. Designed for junior/senior Computer Science majors. Grammars, automata, and languages. Finite-state languages and finite-state automata. Context-free languages and pushdown story automata. Unrestricted rewriting systems, recursively enumerable and recursive languages, and Turing machines. Closure properties, pumping lemmas, and decision algorithms. Introduction to computability. Letter grading.

Review Summary

Clarity
6.7 / 10
Organization
8.3 / 10
Time
5-10 hrs/week
Overall
8.3 / 10

Reviews

    Quarter Taken: Fall 2020 Online
    Grade: B+

    Professor Mekha is a great professor, I just felt like I had no preparation for the course material and it was very jarring at the start. The class grading was very fair, and the homeworks / tests were pretty similar.

    Quarter Taken: Fall 2021 In-Person
    Grade: B-

    Meka is a great professor! The lectures were presented well, the exams were pretty fair and straightforward, he organized the class materials well, and he was highly responsive on our discussion board. He was also very accommodating for extenuating personal circumstances. Overall, you can tell he genuinely cares about the class and our learning.

    Quarter Taken: Fall 2021 In-Person
    Grade: A+

    This professor is amazing! He has amazing notes that are easy to follow and knows how to simply explain complicated topics.

    Quarter Taken: Fall 2022 In-Person
    Grade: A

    Meka is a good professor, but the content itself isn't the most interesting. Homework was very doable and all the lectures were recorded to youtube

    Quarter Taken: Fall 2022 In-Person
    Grade: A

    Meka is a great lecturer and explains concepts clearly. I like that he takes his notes during class so you can follow along and also appreciate that he records and posts recordings of his lectures promptly. He clearly cares about students' learning and I would recommend taking this course with him!

    Quarter Taken: Fall 2022 In-Person
    Grade: A

    Professor Meka was amazing. His lectures were super clear and engaging. The exams were fair and reflected a lot of the examples done during the class and on the homeworks.

    Quarter Taken: Fall 2022 In-Person
    Grade: A+

    he's the goat. go to his lectures, do the hw, do the practice problems as you would for any other class and you'll be fine

    Quarter Taken: Fall 2022 In-Person
    Grade: A

    Meka is a tremendous professor. His lectures are extremely well prepared and very clear, making difficult concepts like proofs and computability in general easy to understand.

    His exams are very fair and reward thorough studying of past exams and homework problems. Do all the homework problems and even the additional practice problems.

    Quarter Taken: Fall 2022 In-Person
    Grade: A

    Professor Meka was a really good and clear lecturer. He recreated his notes from scratch during lecture so we could see the thought process behind the concepts. Occasionally, he will have some confusing material, but he usually will clarify them in another lecture or on Edstem (discussion page sort of like Campuswire). I was pretty prepared for the tests since there were past material provided for us to study. The homework was also relevant and prepared us for the exams. The only assignments were written homeworks and so the workload was fairly light. There were three exams all 2 hours long and non-cumulative. Meka also let us choose a topic that we would cover for the last three lectures. We chose quantum computing and he taught the basics fairly well. He is a pretty goated professor.

    Quarter Taken: Fall 2022 In-Person
    Grade: A

    I loved this class, take it with Meka he is the GOAT

Course

Instructor
Raghu Meka
Previously taught
22F 21F 20F

Grading Information

  • No group projects

  • Attendance not required

  • 1 midterm

  • Finals week final

  • 36% recommend the textbook

Previous Grades

Grade distributions not available.