Top "Theory" questions

Programming-language-agnostic Questions that focus on the theoretical aspects rather than the actual implementations.

Naive Bayes vs. SVM for classifying text data

I'm working on a problem that involves classifying a large database of texts. The texts are very short (think 3-8 …

machine-learning scikit-learn theory supervised-learning
What are the main differences between the Knuth-Morris-Pratt and Boyer-Moore search algorithms?

What are the main differences between the Knuth-Morris-Pratt search algorithm and the Boyer-Moore search algorithm? I know KMP searches for …

algorithm theory string-search
Subtracting a large unsigned binary number from a smaller one

I'm taking a computer organization and assembly language course. The written part of our lab this week has a question …

math binary theory subtraction
Proof that the halting problem is NP-hard?

In this answer to a question about the definitions of NP, NP-hard, and NP-complete, Jason makes the claim that The …

theory proof halting-problem np
What is the difference between recursive and recursively enumerable languages

I was wondering what the difference between recursive and recursively enumerable languages is in terms of halting and Turing Machines. …

computer-science theory computation-theory turing-machines formal-languages
Difference between Turing-Decidable and Co-Turing-Decidable

I am really struggling with understanding the difference between these two. From my textbook, it essentially describes the difference by …

theory turing-machines computation-theory
Is window really global in Javascript?

Take this piece of Javascript in a browser: <script> console.log(window.someThing); var x = 12; function foo() { window.…

javascript scope closures theory
Is it possible for a computer to "learn" a regular expression by user-provided examples?

Is it possible for a computer to "learn" a regular expression by user-provided examples? To clarify: I do not want …

regex artificial-intelligence theory automata
Why can Conway’s Game of Life be classified as a universal machine?

I was recently reading about artificial life and came across the statement, "Conway’s Game of Life demonstrates enough complexity …

theory turing-complete computability
What is the use of finite automata?

What is the use of finite automata? And all the concepts that we study in the theory of computation. I've …

theory finite-automata