Assignments and Evaluation

All students will be graded by the following components:

Component	Weight	Deadline	Submission
Assignment 1	5%	Thursday, January 26th by start of tutorial session	Gradescope
Assignment 2	5%	Thursday, February 9th by start of tutorial session	Gradescope
Assignment 3	5%	Thursday, March 2nd by start of tutorial session	Gradescope
Assignment 4	5%	Thursday, March 23rd by start of tutorial session	Gradescope
Assignment 5	5%	Thursday, April 6th by start of tutorial session	Gradescope
Midterm test	25%	Thursday, February 16th, During Tutorial Session	Remote/online in OWL
Final Exam	50%	TBD	In person

Assignment Formatting Requirements

You must use a software tool for any diagrams involving automata. Hand-drawn automata diagrams will not be accepted.

How to draw Finite State Machines

There are several options for drawing automata in software. Here are two.

Option 1: LaTeX with TiKZ

LaTeX is a typesetting markup language. It has a bit of a learning curve, but if you want to produce documents like a real computer scientist or mathematician, this is for you.

If you don't want to install LaTeX on your local machine, Overleaf provides a cloud-based interface, and is a common choice for many graduate students.

TiKZ is a LaTeX package for drawing diagrams. Here's a good tutorial on how to draw automata.

Option 2: Graphviz Online Editor

If you want the "easy-button" option, the online Graphviz editor is for you.

Here's an example of a deterministic finite automaton on the alphabet {0,1} that accepts all strings that contain one or more 1's:

digraph finite_state_machine {
	node [fontname="Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif"]
	edge [fontname="Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif"]
	rankdir=LR;

	#Define final/accepting states
	node [shape = doublecircle]; b;
	node [shape = circle];
	
	#Define initial state
 	start -> a;
	
	#Define state transitions
	a -> a [label = "0"];
	a -> b [label = "1"];
	b -> b [label = "0,1"];
}