Sean Yaw taught this course fantastically. The material was taught concisely me understandably. The assignments were made to help master the material and were very doable, although a lot of work. Projects put concepts into practice, and Yaw was sure to emphasize what was relevant and how it would be applicable to computing:

DFA’s, NDFA’s, Pumping Lemma, P and NP completeness. Very useful, helps you understand state patterns very well, as well as what we can and can’t compute.

Sean is an incredible Professor. Somehow, he made CS theory fun; on a couple occasions he had the whole class laughing. He made hard to grasp concepts understandable. Sean wants to see you succeed; he truly doesn’t want anyone to fail his class. His office hours were helpful, he was always sure to help you conquer concepts abs assignment problems you struggled with.

TAKE NOTES!!! Often topics abs example problems covered in class appear exactly or very similarly in homework or exams. He had open note exams, so having good notes was key to acing the exams. Start projects abs assignments when they are assigned. This is not the kind of class to wait to the last minute for. If you do what you can and go to office hours, you will get A’s. On projects, pick a good partner. They are difficult and algorithm heavy, make sure you have mastered the concepts before starting and have a solid foundation in algorithms and data structures. The book is not needed, but helpful in looking at example solutions in reference to example solutions to assignments.