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Learner Reviews & Feedback for System Validation: Automata and behavioural equivalences by EIT Digital

4.4
stars
182 ratings

About the Course

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 EIT Digital online programme called 'Internet of Things through Embedded Systems'....

Top reviews

OF

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!

ML

Jul 29, 2020

This was a really good course. The professor is good as well. I would certainly recommend that people take this course.

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1 - 25 of 45 Reviews for System Validation: Automata and behavioural equivalences

By George J

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May 28, 2020

Good course on Automata and behavioural equivalences.

The assessment questions are really challenging.

By Marcelo N T

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Oct 19, 2016

Very interesting and a good fine-tuning experience to my brain relating to systems! Awesome!

By Oleg V

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Nov 2, 2018

Very 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.

By Minjun K

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Oct 16, 2017

Content 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...

By Sergei I

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May 28, 2018

A little coarse course.

By Aaron B

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Sep 8, 2017

This 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.

By Sander W

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Jan 27, 2020

Very 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.

By Orozco E J F

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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!

By Marc L

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Jul 30, 2020

This was a really good course. The professor is good as well. I would certainly recommend that people take this course.

By Iosif Z

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Oct 26, 2022

The course has a good space, illustrations and exercises during videos to check your knowledge. It's fun to learn.

By Radu O

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Jul 21, 2023

Teaches a very good way of framing and thinking about software verification problems.

By Marcel M

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Jun 27, 2022

As an mechanical Engineer it is a good start to see how Programs "think"

By Carlos D N D

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Dec 14, 2016

Although superficial, it is a very good MOOC for introducing LTS testing.

By acepasag

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Oct 14, 2016

I've learn more thing's in this course..., thank you Coursera :) :) :)

By Praeator T

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May 15, 2017

Thanks! Very well done for an introductory course.

By Dong A

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Feb 20, 2018

Very helpful for me to learn about the automata

By Letícia G

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Apr 12, 2018

Very helpful! Thank you very much!

By JAIME A H G

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Jun 12, 2021

Very useful course. ¡Thank you!

By Diego B

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Sep 23, 2022

Nice theoretical course!

By Eric L

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Dec 1, 2016

Useful introduction.

By M v M v

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May 10, 2020

ITS REALLY USEFUL

By POTTI R G

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Nov 5, 2019

Very Good Subject

By Tanuja N

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Apr 9, 2021

Very Interesting

By Ruslaan B A G

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Aug 4, 2019

Useful knowledge

By Rayees A L

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Jun 10, 2020

Fully satisfied