6.045J/18.400J: Automata, Computability and Complexity Prof.

Nancy Lynch

Quiz 2
March 30, 2005

Please write your name in the upper corner of each page.

Problem Score

Total

Q2-1
Name:

Problem 1: True or False (20 points) Full credit will be given for correct answers. If you include justica
tion for your answers, you may obtain partial credit for incorrect answers.

1. True or False: There exists a Turing machine that enumerates a set of (encodings of) decider Tur
ing machines, such that includes Turing machines that decide innitely many different decidable
languages.

2. True or False: There exists a Turing machine that enumerates a set of (encodings of) decider Turing
machines, such that includes at least one Turing machine that decides each decidable language.

3. True or False: There exists a Turing machine that enumerates an innite set of (encodings of) decider
Turing machines, such that every machine that outputs is minimal. (Here minimal means that
there is no other smaller decider Turing machine that decides the same language.)

4. True or False: Rices Theorem immediately implies that

is a Turing machine and  

is undecidable.
Name:

5. True or False: If is a decidable language and is a Turing recognizable language, then

6. True or False: If is a Turing recognizable language and is a decidable language, then must
be Turing-recognizable.

7. True or False: A three-dimensional Turing machine is like an ordinary Turing machine except that its
tape storage consists of a three dimensional tape, where each tape cell is a unit cube. In one step,
the single tape head can move north, south, east, west, up, or down.
The class of languages recognized by three-dimensional Turing machines is exactly the Turing-recognizable
languages.

8. True or False: The class of languages recognized by three-stack machines is exactly the Turing recog
nizable languages.
Name:

Problem 2: (25 points) Consider the following formal description of a Turing Machine , where
, , . Assume that any unspecied transitions go to
.

0 L
0 R
1 R 1 L

0 ,R L 1 ,L q
q0 q q 3
1 2

R
R

q
accept

1. (5 points) Write out the accepting computation history of on input , in the form given in class and
in Sipsers book. Describe the behavior represented in this computation history in words.
Name:

2. (5 points) What language does recognize? (Give a precise denition.)

3. (10 points) Give the set of tiles for the modied Post Correspondence Problem, for this particular
machine and input . Indicate which is the initial tile.
We have started things off by listing the tiles needed for completing the match from the point where an
accepting state is encountered. You must dene the initial tile and the tiles needed to represent all the
moves.

The initial tile :

Tiles for the right moves :

Tiles for the left moves :

The alphabet tiles:

, , , ,



The clean-up tiles : , , ,
,


, ,

Name:

4. (5 points) Write the accepting computation history you wrote for part (b) twice, one above the other,
and mark the boundaries of the MPCP tiles involved in the match. You may skip the part involved in
terminating the computationjust mark the tiles up to the rst occurrence of the accept state.
Name:

Problem 3: (10 points) Suppose we have a Turing Machine that, on each input string , either halts with
an output string on its tape or loops forever. Describe briey how to constuct an enumerator Turing machine
that enumerates the outputs produced by on all the inputs.
Name:

Problem 4: (20 points) Let accepts all strings of even length and does not
accept any strings of odd length
1. (2 points) Does Rices Theorem apply to ? Why or why not? If it does apply, then what
does this imply about EVENODD?

2. (9 points) Is EVENODD Turing-recognizable? Prove your answer. You may use any results proved in
class or in Sipsers book, but if you do, then cite the results explicitly.
Name:

3. (9 points) Is the complement of EVENODD Turing-recognizable? Again, prove your answer. Again,
you may use any results proved in class or in the book, but cite them explicitly.
Name:

Problem 5: (15 points) Let be the following language of Turing machine descriptions:
is a Turing machine with input alphabet and accepts every string consisting of just
zeros (it may accept other strings)
Prove that is undecidable using the Recursion Theorem. Do this by lling in the following proof outline:

Suppose for the sake of contradiction that

Let be

Dene a Turing machine :

This is possible because of .

Run on input .

If accepts then .
If rejects then .

If accepts all strings consisting of only zeros, then

But this implies that,

On the other hand, if does not accept all strings consisting of only zeros, then

.
But this implies that,
, which is also impossible.

Therefore, we have a contradiction, and cannot be decidable.

Problem 6: (10 points) Consider a new kind of machine, a -Queue Machine. A -Queue Machine has the
same general structure as a -Counter Machine or a -Stack Machine. However, it has queues for storage
instead of counters or stacks. Initially, each queue is empty.
It supports the following operations (Let be the alphabet of queue symbols):
1. : takes a symbol in , and adds it to the end of queue .
2. : removes the symbol at the front of queue , if is nonempty. If is empty, this operation
does nothing.
3. : a boolean, which returns 1 if queue is currently empty, 0 otherwise.

Briey outline an argument that the acceptance problem for -Queue-Machines is undecidable.
Name:

Scratch Work