turing machine
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.18 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
13
Letters
4
Syllables
11
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An abstract computing machine that has a finite number of possible internal states and operates on an infinite memory tape by first reading a symbol from a cell in the tape, and then, deterministically, based on that symbol and the machine’s state, writing a symbol in that cell, moving to a neighboring cell, and/or changing state.
Example Sentences
- "Another class, P, is a subset of NP, and includes all decision problems that can be solved by a (deterministic) Turing machine in polynomial time."
Etymology
Named after English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer Alan Turing (1912–1954), who introduced the concept in 1936 to give a mathematically precise definition of computability. Turing called it an a-machine; the term "Turing machine" was coined by his doctoral advisor Alonzo Church.