I’m noticing that I want to know more about the basics of theoretical computer science, subjects like the theory of computation.
This is a leisure activity for me (at least for the time being), as opposed to something that I’m going to put substantial study into. I’d like to more or less passively watch a series of videos on the topic, to get a first pass understanding of the conceptual vocabulary and how those concepts relate to each other.
There are lots of courses / series on YouTube, and I don’t know which to pick. I’m currently planning to just sample from a few of them, and see which I like best, but I thought I would ask here if there was a series that folks found particularly informative, or clear, or well taught, or otherwise good.
If there was one that you liked, please share!
I’m also glad to hear suggestions about better forums or alternative methods for answering questions like this one. For that matter, I’m curious if people have heuristics for making assessments like these.
As a side question, does anyone know why a large fraction (maybe half?) of the explanation videos on youtube for this topic are in Hindi? I’ve never seen that pattern for anything else that I’ve been interested in before.
I’d suspect some of it is the particular keywords you’re using being popular for a set of course requirements at Indian schools. Other related keywords may be more popular for English material.
Ahh that’s because in India we have a graduate entrance exam called GATE (for admission to IITs and other institutes). And ToC carries a lot of weight-age.
This is the case for a lot of CS topics, which you might notice once you start searching for things about algorithms Java, C++, etc.. I’m guessing that many of these schools + lecturers also use YouTube as a platform, and India has a large population, so these videos get lots of views.
I found Introduction to Automata theory by Ullman on EdX to be extremely useful. It covers most of the basics and there’s also a book by the same author. Apart from the lectures you also get access to high quality assignments, problem sets which I think are very essential for a course like ToC.
I think it depends on what you’re looking to get out of this.
I took theory of computation at university with a textbook by Michael Sipser, which is the standard textbook on the subject for many university classes. I just did a cursory look on YouTube, and most of the things I find are university lecture series, e.g. one from UC Davis; these might be dry to listen to.
If you’re willing to dive into written material, I think Scott Aaronson is probably a very good choice for technical writing that explains clearly, without assuming too much.
Past that, I suspect that his lecture series Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science will also serve as a useful overview to many different topics you’ll likely encounter when studying the field of theoretical CS.
Also, happy to talk about things personally. Feel free to ping me here or elsewhere where we’ve connected if you have questions.
[Question] Anyone recommend a video course on the theory of computation?
Hey all,
I’m noticing that I want to know more about the basics of theoretical computer science, subjects like the theory of computation.
This is a leisure activity for me (at least for the time being), as opposed to something that I’m going to put substantial study into. I’d like to more or less passively watch a series of videos on the topic, to get a first pass understanding of the conceptual vocabulary and how those concepts relate to each other.
There are lots of courses / series on YouTube, and I don’t know which to pick. I’m currently planning to just sample from a few of them, and see which I like best, but I thought I would ask here if there was a series that folks found particularly informative, or clear, or well taught, or otherwise good.
If there was one that you liked, please share!
I’m also glad to hear suggestions about better forums or alternative methods for answering questions like this one. For that matter, I’m curious if people have heuristics for making assessments like these.
Thanks!
Eli
Might be more serious/studious than what you looking for, but I’ve heard there’s some material called
‘From NAND to Tetris’.
As a side question, does anyone know why a large fraction (maybe half?) of the explanation videos on youtube for this topic are in Hindi? I’ve never seen that pattern for anything else that I’ve been interested in before.
I’d suspect some of it is the particular keywords you’re using being popular for a set of course requirements at Indian schools. Other related keywords may be more popular for English material.
Ahh that’s because in India we have a graduate entrance exam called GATE (for admission to IITs and other institutes). And ToC carries a lot of weight-age.
This is the case for a lot of CS topics, which you might notice once you start searching for things about algorithms Java, C++, etc.. I’m guessing that many of these schools + lecturers also use YouTube as a platform, and India has a large population, so these videos get lots of views.
I found Introduction to Automata theory by Ullman on EdX to be extremely useful. It covers most of the basics and there’s also a book by the same author. Apart from the lectures you also get access to high quality assignments, problem sets which I think are very essential for a course like ToC.
I think it depends on what you’re looking to get out of this.
I took theory of computation at university with a textbook by Michael Sipser, which is the standard textbook on the subject for many university classes. I just did a cursory look on YouTube, and most of the things I find are university lecture series, e.g. one from UC Davis; these might be dry to listen to.
If you’re willing to dive into written material, I think Scott Aaronson is probably a very good choice for technical writing that explains clearly, without assuming too much.
Who can name the biggest number? will give you a quick introduction to ideas in computability theory.
Past that, I suspect that his lecture series Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science will also serve as a useful overview to many different topics you’ll likely encounter when studying the field of theoretical CS.
Also, happy to talk about things personally. Feel free to ping me here or elsewhere where we’ve connected if you have questions.