IZ
5.0Reviewed Oct 25, 2022
The course has a good space, illustrations and exercises during videos to check your knowledge. It's fun to learn.
Good course on Automata and behavioural equivalences.
The assessment questions are really challenging.
System Validation: Automata and behavioural equivalences
Have you ever experienced software systems failing? Websites crash, calendar not synchronising, or even a power blackout. Of course you have! But did you know that many of these errors are the result of communication errors either within a system or between systems? Depending on the system, the impact of software failures can be huge, even resulting in massive economic damage or loss of lives. Software, and in particular the communication between software-intensive systems, is very complex and very difficult to get right. However, we need dependability in the systems we use, directly or indirectly, to support us in our everyday lives. System Validation helps you to design embedded system behaviour that is structurally sound. It also forces you to make the behaviour simple and insightful; systems that are designed for sound behaviour are also much easier to maintain and adapt. System Validation is the field that studies the fundamentals of system communication and information processing. The techniques put forward in system validaton allow to prove the absence of errors. This first course ’Automata and behavioural equivalences', builds the foundation of the subsequent courses, showing you how to look at system behaviour as state machines. It discusses behavioural equivalences and illustrates these in a number of examples and quizzes. This course explains labelled transition systems or automata to model behaviour, especially for software controlled systems. An important question is when two behaviours represented by such automata are equal. The answer to this question is not at all straightforward, but the resulting equivalences are used as powerful tools to simplify complex behaviour. This allows us to exactly investigate and understand the behavioural properties of such systems precisely. Especially, in the combination with hiding of behaviour, equivalence reduction is a unique technique to obtain insight in the behaviour of systems, and is far more effective than simulation or testing. Using this insight we can make the models correct. Such models form an excellent basis for the production of concise, reliable and maintainable software. This course is part I of the set of courses for System Validation. System Validation, as a set of courses, is part of a larger 28DIGITAL online programme called 'Internet of Things through Embedded Systems'.
Status: Communication Systems
Status: Embedded Systems
IntermediateCourse4 hours
Featured reviews
ML
5.0Reviewed Jul 29, 2020
This was a really good course. The professor is good as well. I would certainly recommend that people take this course.
ED
4.0Reviewed Dec 4, 2017
A very good introduction for model checking. I had some knownledge and it was very good refresh.
DD
5.0Reviewed Dec 13, 2016
Although superficial, it is a very good MOOC for introducing LTS testing.
RO
5.0Reviewed Jul 20, 2023
Teaches a very good way of framing and thinking about software verification problems.
PT
5.0Reviewed May 14, 2017
Thanks! Very well done for an introductory course.
OF
5.0Reviewed May 21, 2021
Jan Friso Groote is a great professor. The only thing that was kind of hard for me was understanding his English because I'm Spanish native speaker. Thanks for this awesome course!
JA
4.0Reviewed Apr 10, 2023
Good to learn new things. the recorded sound quality is not too clear. However I managed to learn from the professor a lot.
AA
5.0Reviewed Oct 13, 2016
I've learn more thing's in this course..., thank you Coursera :) :) :)
GJ
5.0Reviewed May 27, 2020
Good course on Automata and behavioural equivalences.The assessment questions are really challenging.
All reviews
Showing: 20 of 45
All Learners
All Stars
Most Helpful
George Joseph
5.0
Reviewed May 28, 2020Marcelo Nahuel Tuller
5.0
Reviewed Oct 19, 2016Very interesting and a good fine-tuning experience to my brain relating to systems! Awesome!
Oleg Volkov
3.0
Reviewed Nov 2, 2018Very little explanations on quite complex matter (especially on branching bisimulation). References to the book are helpful except that sometimes it has different definitions. For example the books definition of the language is the set of non-extendable traces while the lector treats it as the set of terminated traces. The description of alternating bit protocol is absolutely beyond my understanding. Though its rather simple and well described in wikipedia.
Minjun Kim
3.0
Reviewed Oct 16, 2017Content is very unique and nice, but delivery is quite poor. The instructor is murmuring almost every word, and pronunciation is unclear, so that I had to just read the subtitle instead of actually listening to the lecture. It was just too painful for me that I am now hesitating whether I should continue to the next part or not...
Sergei Irin
3.0
Reviewed May 28, 2018A little coarse course.
Aaron Brady
2.0
Reviewed Sep 8, 2017This course is incredibly information dense in lectures, and very light on examples and why and how to apply what you've learned:
First: there are no problem sets and very few examples, making it hard to explore the topics discussed in the lecture. I'm not the best listener, so maybe everything is clear and I'm missing it, but doing is the way I learn best. Also, I can find almost no reference to this topic anywhere else which is a little unusual
Second: the lectures don't motivate the topic in any practical way. Even the 'alternating bit' protocol lecture was just discussing the solution to the problem itself. Having watched all the lectures I still don't know what I would use any of this topic for. Also couldn't get the 'alternating bit protocol' software to work, just crashed on my osx laptop.
I would love to do a class on system validation, Coq, TLA+, etc. are all interesting topics to me, I just want a class that helps me do those things.
Sander Wasser
5.0
Reviewed Jan 27, 2020Very nice course to learn about behavioural equivalance. Sometimes it was kinda hard to keep track of the different types of bisimulation. A 5 min recap/summarization video about weak/strong/branching/rooted/divergence bisimulation would have made it perfect for me.
Orozco Escobar Juan Felipe
5.0
Reviewed May 21, 2021Jan Friso Groote is a great professor. The only thing that was kind of hard for me was understanding his English because I'm Spanish native speaker. Thanks for this awesome course!
Marc Larock
5.0
Reviewed Jul 30, 2020This was a really good course. The professor is good as well. I would certainly recommend that people take this course.
Iosif Zota
5.0
Reviewed Oct 26, 2022The course has a good space, illustrations and exercises during videos to check your knowledge. It's fun to learn.
Radu Ometita
5.0
Reviewed Jul 21, 2023Teaches a very good way of framing and thinking about software verification problems.
Marcel Motzkus
5.0
Reviewed Jun 27, 2022As an mechanical Engineer it is a good start to see how Programs "think"
Diego
5.0
Reviewed Dec 14, 2016Although superficial, it is a very good MOOC for introducing LTS testing.
acepasag
5.0
Reviewed Oct 14, 2016I've learn more thing's in this course..., thank you Coursera :) :) :)
Praeator Tassadar
5.0
Reviewed May 15, 2017Thanks! Very well done for an introductory course.
Dong Ann
5.0
Reviewed Feb 20, 2018Very helpful for me to learn about the automata
Letícia Gindri
5.0
Reviewed Apr 12, 2018Very helpful! Thank you very much!
JAIME ANDRES HURTADO GIRALDO
5.0
Reviewed Jun 12, 2021Very useful course. ¡Thank you!
Diego Bravo
5.0
Reviewed Sep 23, 2022Nice theoretical course!
Eric Laarz
5.0
Reviewed Dec 1, 2016Useful introduction.