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Wolfram Automata GUI (Read 1670 times)
st33d
Wolfram Automata GUI
Nov 24th, 2005, 1:42am  
Went to the library today and read A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram. Contrary to what I thought it would be, it is the most down to earth and easy to understand book that has anything to do with science and math that I have ever encountered.

If you haven't read it yet I urge you to beg, borrow or steal it. There's a lot in there that can be implemented very easily in Processing. (Without understanding any math at all!)

Our learning section already has the basic one dimensional automata demo but I thought I would make one with a GUI so you can experiment with the interesting patterns.

Wolfram Cellular Automata with GUI

It's a bit poorly coded but I only looked in the learning section after I got stuck from putting some variables the wrong way round.
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st33d
Re: Wolfram Automata GUI
Reply #1 - Nov 26th, 2005, 5:23pm  
Now with four colours
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blprnt
Re: Wolfram Automata GUI
Reply #2 - Nov 26th, 2005, 10:43pm  
I've been meaning to pick up that book. Nice to hear a good review of it - I'll have to hit the library in search of it next week...
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http://blprnt.com > Digital curiosities in Flash and Processing&&
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Oolong
Re: Wolfram Automata GUI
Reply #3 - Dec 1st, 2005, 2:07pm  
The whole book is available online now.

I have a physical copy though, which I've found very difficult to read (and consequently have only got a couple of chapters in) - not because the ideas were difficult, but because I had a hard time getting past all the bombast. Wolfram was apparently utterly convinced of the novelty of his ideas, and felt the need to spend much the book talking about how new and important they are, without ever acknowledging any of the work which has taken place in much the same areas, or the ideas which were already quite well-established when he started.

He is also a little too ready to point at a pretty picture which looks a bit like a snowflake, for instance, and say 'Look! New insight into how snowflakes work! See'

This is a pain, because I still suspect that there may well have been new and important things being said, they were just obscured (for me) by all the bits about how NEW! and IMPORTANT! everything in the book apparently was. I hope to get back to reading it before too long, anyway.

Even if my suspicion is wrong, he's definitely collected together a whole bunch of interesting ways to make pretty pictures!
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st33d
Re: Wolfram Automata GUI
Reply #4 - Dec 2nd, 2005, 11:00pm  
Yeah, I've calmed down now. I just found it refreshing after trying to read so many neural net books - they're pretty unforgiving on the uninitiated (says the man with one crap maths qualification). After reading a couple of pages of his "promo" I didn't really bother with the text - it's obvious what's happening in the pictures.

I sent an email to Douglas Hofstadter because I thought a comment in one of his books about fluidity being emergent of randomness was contradicted by the turbulence model in the Wolfram book. Hofstadter wrote back pointing out that although based on simple rules the automata did actually exhibit randomness or chaotic behaviour. So, fluidity is still emergent of randomness (or irrationality). Plus he'd already done stuff like this back in the 60s with Q(n) = Q(n-Q(n-1)) + Q(n-Q(n-2)), so the Wolfram stuff wasn't really news to him. But he was very nice about it and at least I haven't made a tit of myself in my thesis (I hope).

So, in reflection. If like me you hate maths in general but like simple algebra so much you still want to program I'd still recommend it for ideas. But it isn't necessary to beg, borrow or steal because a flick through the library copy or the online copy (or Oolong's) is enough.
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