Synopses & Reviews
This highly anticipated revision builds upon the strengths of the previous edition. Sipser's candid, crystal-clear style allows students at every level to understand and enjoy this field. His innovative "proof idea" sections explain profound concepts in plain English. The new edition incorporates many improvements students and professors have suggested over the years, and offers updated, classroom-tested problem sets at the end of each chapter.
Synopsis
Michael Sipser's emphasis on unifying computer science theory - rather than offering a collection of low-level details - sets the book apart, as do his intuitive explanations. Throughout the book, Sipser builds students' knowledge of conceptual tools used in computer science, the aesthetic sense they need to create elegant systems, and the ability to think through problems on their own.
About the Author
Dr. Sipser has been at MIT teaching and doing research in computational complexity theory for the past 24 years. He has published on a variety of areas, including circuit complexity, interactive proof systems, probabilistic computation and quantum computation. He enjoys lecturing, and has given courses ranging from freshman calculus to advanced seminars in complexity. In addition to MIT, he has held positions at the University of California/Berkeley and at IBM research.
Table of Contents
Part 1: Automata and Languages 1. Regular Languages 2. Context-Free Languages Part 2: Computability Theory 3. The Church-Turing Thesis 4. Decidability 5. Reducibility 6. Advanced Topics in Computability Theory Part 3: Complexity Theory 7. Time Complexity 8. Space Complexity 9. Intractability 10. Advanced Topics in Complexity Theory Systems