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Church's Thesis, or the Church-Turing Thesis, asserts that any function that can be effectively computed can also be computed by a Turing machine. It provides a formal definition of 'effectively computable' functions. Additionally, the document discusses undecidable problems, including the Halting Problem, Post Correspondence Problem, Tiling Problem, and the Equivalence Problem for Context-Free Grammars, which lack algorithms that can provide correct answers for all inputs.

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2 views9 pages

Toc2 Toc1 Merged

Church's Thesis, or the Church-Turing Thesis, asserts that any function that can be effectively computed can also be computed by a Turing machine. It provides a formal definition of 'effectively computable' functions. Additionally, the document discusses undecidable problems, including the Halting Problem, Post Correspondence Problem, Tiling Problem, and the Equivalence Problem for Context-Free Grammars, which lack algorithms that can provide correct answers for all inputs.

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Prinsa Joshi
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Church’s thesis

Church's Thesis, also known as the Church-Turing Thesis, is a foundational concept in the
field of theory of computation (TOC). It states that any function that can be effectively
computed (i.e., calculable by a human using a mechanical process) can be computed by a
Turing machine.

Formal Statement

Every effectively calculable function is computable by a Turing machine.

The main agenda of Church's Thesis (or the Church-Turing Thesis) is to provide a formal
definition of what it means for a function to be "effectively computable."

In essence, it asserts that:

●​ Every function that can be computed by a human following a systematic and


mechanical process (an "effective procedure") can be computed by a Turing
machine.

Regular Expressions and Regular Grammers


Undecidable Problems

An undecidable problem is a decision problem for which no algorithm exists that can
always provide a correct yes-or-no answer for all possible inputs. In other words, it is
impossible to construct a Turing machine or any equivalent computational model that solves
the problem for every possible instance.

Examples of Undecidable Problems

1.​ Halting Problem:


○​ Definition: Determine whether a given Turing machine will halt (finish its
computation) or loop forever on a given input.
○​ Undecidability Proof: Alan Turing proved in 1936 that no algorithm can solve
this problem for all possible Turing machines and inputs.
2.​ Post Correspondence Problem (PCP):
○​ Definition: Given two lists of strings AAA and BBB, determine if there exists a
sequence of indices such that concatenating the strings at those indices from
AAA equals the concatenation of strings at those indices from BBB.
○​ Undecidability: Proven to be undecidable in general.
3.​ Tiling Problem:
○​ Definition: Given a set of tiles with specific edge colors, determine if these
tiles can tile an infinite plane without gaps or mismatched edges.
○​ Undecidability: Proven undecidable by logician Robert Berger in 1966.
4.​ Equivalence Problem for Context-Free Grammars:
○​ Definition: Determine whether two context-free grammars generate the same
language.
○​ Undecidability: No algorithm can decide this for all grammars.

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