Limits of Computation

Edna E. Reiter, Ph.D., is the current Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at California State University, East Bay (CSUEB). Her research interests include noncommutative ring theory and theoretical aspects of computer science. Clayton Matthew Johnson, Ph.D., is the graduate coordinator for all M.S. students and the incoming Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at CSUEB. His research interests include genetic algorithms and machine learning. Drs. Reiter and Johnson developed the subject matter for the CSUEB Computation and Complexity course, which is required for all students in the computer science M.S. program. The course covers the hard problems of computer science—those that are intractable or undecidable. The material in this book has been tested on multiple sections of CSUEB students.

Introduction. Set Theory. Languages: Alphabets, Strings, and Languages. Algorithms. Turing Machines. Turing-Completeness. Undecidability. Undecidability and Reducibility. Classes NP and NP-Complete. More NP-Complete Problems. Other Interesting Questions and Classes. Bibliography. Index.