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COMS W3261

Computer Science Theory: Computability - Models - Computation · Computer Science

Regular languages: deterministic and non-deterministic finite automata, regular expressions. Context-free languages: context-free grammars, push-down automata. Turing machines, the Chomsky…

Who teaches COMS W3261

What students said

Tal Malkin · 2026 · 2026

- Biweekly-ish online quizzes that were usually pretty fast to complete and served as a good test of one's understanding with the current topics - 5 Homeworks, which were the most time-consuming part of the class, but could be completed in a day or two - 2 non-cumulative exams

Seung Choi · 2013 · 2013

Standard. Five problem sets, lowest one dropped, which took about four hours of real thinking. Two average midterms, hard final.

Alfred Aho · 2017 · 2017

5 homeworks (drop the lowest one) (15%) 1 midterm (40%) 1 "final" that is really just another midterm (45%)

Mihalis Yannakakis · 2026 · 2026

Homework sets were pretty hard, compared to the lecture examples, the questions he gave were like 3x harder. Midterm was pretty straightforward and matched the homework and lectures in class but the final was hard, maybe because it was take home. I spend around 5-6 hours every 2 weeks for the homework.

Toniann Pitassi · 2026 · 2026

The assignments will be weighted in whichever of the following two ways results in a better score for each student: Homework (24%), First Exam (38%), Second Exam (38%) Homework (24%), First Exam (26%), Second Exam (50%) 5 homework assignments, some of which with extra credit

Omri Weinstein · 2020 · 2020

Easy homework, brutal exams (mind you, that's like 80% of your grade)

Joshua Alman · 2024 · 2024

6 homeworks, lowest was dropped, bonus problems on all of them worth up to an extra 15%, 1 midterm and final. Spent 5-10hrs a week on this class

Robert Holliday · 2015 · 2015

-Weekly problem sets (should take at most 5 hours for each one) -One midterm -One final

Jon Feldman · 2005 · 2005

6 problem sets, worth a lot. 3 quizes worth less. And a Final not worth as much as the problem sets. Get good grades of the p sets and you will be solid.

Xi Chen · 2025 · 2025

For the summer session, 5 psets and 2 exams. HW and exams are graded very leniently (except the multiple choice which are fairly straightforward). Spent about 3 hours per p-set.

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