Concept
Cellular automaton
Related concepts (22)
Conway's Game of Life
The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input. One interacts with the Game of Life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves. It is Turing complete and can simulate a universal constructor or any other Turing machine.
Rule 110
The Rule 110 cellular automaton (often called simply Rule 110)is an elementary cellular automaton with interesting behavior on the boundary between stability and chaos. In this respect, it is similar to Conway's Game of Life. Like Life, Rule 110 with a particular repeating background pattern is known to be Turing complete. This implies that, in principle, any calculation or computer program can be simulated using this automaton. In an elementary cellular automaton, a one-dimensional pattern of 0s and 1s evolves according to a simple set of rules.
Stephen Wolfram
Stephen Wolfram (ˈwʊlfrəm ; born 29 August 1959) is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer science, mathematics, and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. He is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois Department of Computer Science. As a businessman, he is the founder and CEO of the software company Wolfram Research where he works as chief designer of Mathematica and the Wolfram Alpha answer engine.
A New Kind of Science
A New Kind of Science is a book by Stephen Wolfram, published by his company Wolfram Research under the imprint Wolfram Media in 2002. It contains an empirical and systematic study of computational systems such as cellular automata. Wolfram calls these systems simple programs and argues that the scientific philosophy and methods appropriate for the study of simple programs are relevant to other fields of science.
Computer
A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These programs enable computers to perform a wide range of tasks. A computer system is a nominally complete computer that includes the hardware, operating system (main software), and peripheral equipment needed and used for full operation.
Sierpiński triangle
The Sierpiński triangle (sometimes spelled Sierpinski), also called the Sierpiński gasket or Sierpiński sieve, is a fractal attractive fixed set with the overall shape of an equilateral triangle, subdivided recursively into smaller equilateral triangles. Originally constructed as a curve, this is one of the basic examples of self-similar sets—that is, it is a mathematically generated pattern that is reproducible at any magnification or reduction.
Wolfram code
Wolfram code is a widely used numbering system for one-dimensional cellular automaton rules, introduced by Stephen Wolfram in a 1983 paper and popularized in his book A New Kind of Science. The code is based on the observation that a table specifying the new state of each cell in the automaton, as a function of the states in its neighborhood, may be interpreted as a k-digit number in the S-ary positional number system, where S is the number of states that each cell in the automaton may have, k = S2n + 1 is the number of neighborhood configurations, and n is the radius of the neighborhood.
Rule 30
Rule 30 is an elementary cellular automaton introduced by Stephen Wolfram in 1983. Using Wolfram's classification scheme, Rule 30 is a Class III rule, displaying aperiodic, chaotic behaviour. This rule is of particular interest because it produces complex, seemingly random patterns from simple, well-defined rules. Because of this, Wolfram believes that Rule 30, and cellular automata in general, are the key to understanding how simple rules produce complex structures and behaviour in nature.
John Horton Conway
John Horton Conway (26 December 1937 – 11 April 2020) was an English mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory. He also made contributions to many branches of recreational mathematics, most notably the invention of the cellular automaton called the Game of Life. Born and raised in Liverpool, Conway spent the first half of his career at the University of Cambridge before moving to the United States, where he held the John von Neumann Professorship at Princeton University for the rest of his career.
Automata theory
Automata theory is the study of abstract machines and automata, as well as the computational problems that can be solved using them. It is a theory in theoretical computer science. The word automata comes from the Greek word αὐτόματος, which means "self-acting, self-willed, self-moving". An automaton (automata in plural) is an abstract self-propelled computing device which follows a predetermined sequence of operations automatically. An automaton with a finite number of states is called a Finite Automaton (FA) or Finite-State Machine (FSM).