Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

  • Apple
  • Android
  • Windows Phone
  • Android

To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number.
Download to your computer
Kindle Cloud Reader

Introduction to the Theory of Computation 3rd Edition

by
Michael Sipser (Author)
› Visit Amazon's Michael Sipser Page
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
Are you an author? Learn about Author Central
Michael Sipser (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars 81 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-1133187790
ISBN-10: 113318779X
Why is ISBN important?
ISBN
This bar-code number lets you verify that you're getting exactly the right version or edition of a book. The 13-digit and 10-digit formats both work.
Scan an ISBN with your phone
Use the Amazon App to scan ISBNs and compare prices.
Trade in your item
Get a $38.25
Gift Card.
Trade in
Learn More
Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Sorry, there was a problem.

There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Please try again.

Sorry, there was a problem.

List unavailable.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Rent On clicking this link, a new layer will be open
$33.99 - $99.95 On clicking this link, a new layer will be open
Buy used On clicking this link, a new layer will be open
$194.29 On clicking this link, a new layer will be open
Buy new On clicking this link, a new layer will be open
$232.32 On clicking this link, a new layer will be open
More Buying Choices
41 New from $45.99 44 Used from $68.00
85 used & new from $45.99
See All Buying Options
Free Two-Day Shipping for College Students with Prime Student Free%20Two-Day%20Shipping%20for%20College%20Students%20with%20Amazon%20Student

Free Kaplan PSAT/NMSQT 2017 eTextbook with 2 Practice Tests
Prep smarter, not harder with the Kaplan "PSAT/NMSQT 2017 Strategies, Practice & Review" eTextbook. Sponsored by Kaplan. Download Now
$232.32 FREE Shipping. Only 17 left in stock (more on the way). Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
click to open popover

Frequently Bought Together

  • Introduction to the Theory of Computation
  • +
  • Operating System Concepts
Total price: $380.27
One of these items ships sooner than the other. Show details
Buy the selected items together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.
Back
  1. Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd Edition (MIT Press)
    Thomas H. Cormen
    4.3 out of 5 stars 418
    Hardcover
    $66.32 Prime
  2. Operating System Concepts
    Abraham Silberschatz
    3.7 out of 5 stars 43
    Hardcover
    $147.95 Prime
  3. Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach (7th Edition)
    James Kurose
    3.0 out of 5 stars 2
    Hardcover
    $164.10 Prime
  4. Concepts of Programming Languages (11th Edition)
    Robert W. Sebesta
    4.0 out of 5 stars 6
    Hardcover
    $143.24 Prime
  5. Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective (3rd Edition)
    Randal E. Bryant
    4.4 out of 5 stars 25
    Hardcover
    $149.19 Prime
  6. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (3rd Edition)
    Stuart Russell
    3.9 out of 5 stars 122
    Hardcover
    $153.89 Prime
Next

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested In These Sponsored Links

  (What's this?)
If you buy a new print edition of this book (or purchased one in the past), you can buy the Kindle edition for only $9.99 (Save 87%). Print edition purchase must be sold by Amazon. Learn more.
For thousands of qualifying books, your past, present, and future print-edition purchases now lets you buy the Kindle edition for $2.99 or less. (Textbooks available for $9.99 or less.)
  • Thousands of books are eligible, including current and former best sellers.
  • Look for the Kindle MatchBook icon on print and Kindle book detail pages of qualifying books. You can also see more Kindle MatchBook titles here or look up all of your Kindle MatchBook titles here.
  • Read the Kindle edition on any Kindle device or with a free Kindle Reading App.
  • Print edition must be purchased new and sold by Amazon.com.
  • Gifting of the Kindle edition at the Kindle MatchBook price is not available.
Learn more about Kindle MatchBook.
New York Times best sellers
Browse the New York Times best sellers in popular categories like Fiction, Nonfiction, Picture Books and more. See more

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 480 pages
  • Publisher: Cengage Learning; 3 edition (June 27, 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 113318779X
  • ISBN-13: 978-1133187790
  • Product Dimensions: 1 x 6.5 x 9.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (81 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #187,027 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested In These Sponsored Links

  (What's this?)

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsMost appropriate for CS students
By Brett Bernstein on May 31, 2006
Format: Hardcover
As a teacher of the subject, I have had the chance to evaluate numerous books on the theory of computation. Of all the available texts, I think this one is the most appropriate for CS students. In the past I taught out of Dexter Kozen's book, which is incredibly elegant, but had some resistance from the students. Thinking it over I decided that Kozen's text, although beautiful, may be better suited to students pursuing a degree in pure math. Sipser's book, on the other hand, is more gentle. I find that Sipser demands far less mathematical maturity from his readers, and thus allows the difficulty to be shifted from excessive formalism to the inherent challenges present in the material. In addition, following Sipser's treatment, I was able to cover finite state machines and pushdown automata in far less time, thus allowing me to concentrate on computability and beyond. The book really shines in its treatment of computability theory, eloquently directing attention to some of the most beautiful aspects.

Another benefit of Sipser's book is the exercises, of which there are many more in this edition. Someone studying on their own should find the initial group of exercises in each section quite approachable. Even the more challenging problems are not incredibly hard, and typically draw their difficulty from the deeper themes of the chapter instead of obscure details.

If you are looking for an enjoyable, well-paced book with an introduction to computability and complexity that is truly inspiring, this is the one for you. A mathematician looking for a bit more rigor may do better with Kozen.
Comment 43 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
2.0 out of 5 starsAbsolute rip-off; save yourself at least $100 and get the 2nd edition
By Aureol on July 14, 2014
Format: Hardcover
I'll be honest and say I haven't read the book yet. But, if I haven't read the book yet, why the 2-star review (or any review for that matter)?

It's because this "edition" is a rip-off (honestly, is that surprising?). The text is the EXACT SAME AS THE SECOND EDITION except for one 25-page section (I have perused the two books enough to be able to confirm this). Even the problems are the exact same!

So, you're basically paying anywhere from $100-150 for the newest cover art and 25 pages. Don't waste the money; go get a copy of the 2nd edition instead.
8 Comments 61 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsAppeals to novice and expert
By L. Blunden on February 27, 2006
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
I have a long experience with software development, but not much background in computation theory, just fascinating tidbits I have picked up here and there. So, this book for the first time deepens and organizes for me this hightly abstract and difficult topic.

Being a novice, I at first was afraid that the text of the book would be beyond my understanding. It was not. For sure, the proofs are difficult and may appeal to the person with a degree in computer science. But the copious diagrams, figures and tables are wonderful supplements to the understandable text. For the first time I really could grasp the subtleties of the finit automata, non-determinism, regular expressions, pushdown automata and other topics.

Certainly I can recommend this book to the beginner at computation theory, and even to the more advanced student who may want to review the topic.
Comment 17 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsVery readable, diverse, and a little sparse
By Chris Smith on November 24, 2006
Format: Hardcover
This is a wonderful little gem of a book that presents the theory of computation in a fascinating way. It is targeted at advanced undergraduates in computer science, but assumes remarkably little prior knowledge, making it accessible to nearly anyone. The book covers a lot of ground, including the standard fare of automata, computability, and complexity results, plus some bonus material such as probablistic and parallel complexity, information theory, decidable logical theories, and other topics that are normally left out of introductory books. On top of this, the book is remarkably thin!

The best attribute of Sipser's book, though, is the engaging style. This is an easy book to read. You will not feel like you're running into a brick wall, as is sometimes the case with books on abstract topics. It's not so much that the book is slow or gentle (it's really not) as that it is interesting, engaging, and has a knack for stopping short of getting too caught up in details. A number of small things -- the occasional amusing exercise, the "proof idea" sections, or helpful pictures -- add up to an enjoyable reading experience.

Two cautions are appropriate to students considering this book. First, there are variations between authors in the definitions of various automata (especially PDAs). The differences are trivial, and more a matter of taste than of any real importance; but it could come up if you use Sipser as a supplement to a course that follows a different textbook. Second, the coverage of many topics in Sipser's book is brief and concise, sometimes more than you might like. Some important concepts (for example, pairwise distinguishability of strings) are only mentioned in exercises, not in the main chapter, so at least skim all the exercises even if you don't do them. The sketchy coverage is especially pronounced in advanced topics, so (as always) expect to do some filling in of concepts if you go on into further study of this area.
Comment 16 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
2.0 out of 5 starsNot detailed enough
By EJS on April 11, 2014
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Given the fact that this is considered one of the "standard" reference books, I was surprisingly unimpressed with this book.

There are a number of complaints I have about this book:
1. Its price is just obscene - the fact that they would charge that much for a book that a lot of people are forced to purchase is just wrong on the face of it.
2. The lousy price is especially irritating given what you get for it. Fact is, even at a much lower price this textbook would be a bad value. At a mere 480 pages, this is not an especially long textbook; not sure how the publisher can possibly justify charging an above-average price for a shorter-than-average textbook. There's really nothing I can think of that would justify this book's price tag; it's not like they add some fabulous feature (software package, etc.) that makes this book worth the extra money. I suppose it's more of a "they charge it because they can" type scenario.
3. Not only is it overpriced, it's not even particularly well written. Quite bluntly, the book's relatively short because it doesn't explain anything.

With regards to the third point, I completely agree with the other reviewer who commented that this book is written as if you already understood the material; this is exactly what he does. I had to consult other textbooks all the time in order to be able to solve the book's problems because I found the author's explanations inadequate. It's almost like the author had a minimum word count and he was struggling to meet it ("OK, just 10 more pages to go before I can release it").

On the plus side, the problem sets are, for the most part, decently selected if you have decent reference material to help you with them (e.g.Read more ›
1 Comment 14 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse

Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsGreat book

Well written book that focuses on the logic needed for CS Students

Published 14 hours ago by Amazon Customer
1.0 out of 5 starsTHIS IS THE INTERNATIONAL EDITION

I got this book thinking I got a great deal on a hard copy of a required text for my class. There's a pdf of this book online- just google it, it's the first result. Read more

Published 19 days ago by Anna JM
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

It is a very nice book!

Published 22 days ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Good quality and cheap. Better option than spending 160 in school bookstore

Published 23 days ago by Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 starseither I didn't spend enough time reading this book or the instructor...

I bought it for a CS undergraduate elective course, "Computing theory". After completed the course, I regret taking it. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Susan
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Good

Published 2 months ago by Zeuszf
3.0 out of 5 starsNot great for referencing

Needed to pick it up for a graduate class, so that I could follow their specific formulations (which are standard, I just didn't want to get surprised) for specific models of... Read more

Published 2 months ago by Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.
5.0 out of 5 starsPhenomenal textbook.

Could not have survived my computational theory course without such an excellent textbook.

Published 5 months ago by Anonymous
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Quality of book is good as new. Same covered as classroom book. Very great price.

Published 5 months ago by CTran
1.0 out of 5 stars3 Very Good Reasons Not To Buy This Book

1) This a book published Cengage Learning. A company that has solidly established monopolies in the area of college textbooks, most notably Computer Science and Mathematics. Read more

Published 5 months ago by Walter L. Williams

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Introduction to the Theory of Computation
Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway
This item: Introduction to the Theory of Computation
Set up a giveaway

There's a problem loading this menu right now.

Learn more about Amazon Prime.