Complex behavior generated by simple computation

Posted by Yuval A on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Yuval A
Published on 2010-05-04T07:53:57Z Indexed on 2010/05/04 7:58 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 345

Filed under:

computer-science

|

computability

|

theory

Stephen Wolfram gave a fascinating talk at TED about his work with Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha. Amongst other things, he pointed out how very simple computations can yield extremely complex behaviors. (He goes on to discuss his ambition for computing the entire physical universe. Say what you will, you gotta give the guy some credit for his wild ideas...)

As an example he showed several cellular automata.

What other examples of simple computations do you know of that yield fascinating results?

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about computer-science

How do I completely self study computer science?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
Being a completely self taught programmer I would like it if I could better myself by self-learning computer science course taught to a typical CS grad. Finding different resources on internet has been easy, there is of course MIT open course ware, and there are Coursera courses from Stanford and… >>> More
what, why, when, should I learn computer science?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I'm 16 years old and really an enthusiast on web programming. I know (X)HTML, css, javascript and php. And i heard about computer science. Below are my question: What is computer science? Should a web programmer learn computer science? If the answer of question 2 is yes, then what programming language(s)… >>> More
what, why, when, should I learn computer science?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I'm 16 years old and really an enthusiast on web programming. I know (X)HTML, css, javascript and php. And i heard about computer science. Below are my question: What is computer science is? Should a web programmer learn computer science? If the answer of question 2 is yes, then what programming… >>> More
What topic in computer science is this?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi, I am trying to figure out what 'topic' this is called, so I can learn more about it. Basically, I'm talking about designing my applications's architecture. I'm not talking about algorithms. More like -- this class should have these methods and these instance variables, and communicate with… >>> More
Computer Science Resume [closed]

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am looking for a good computer science resume. I just graduated, and I would like to see some samples from real programmers. The ones online don't seem that great. Sorry if this is posted in the wrong section. >>> More

Related posts about computability

Complex behavior generated by simple computation

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Stephen Wolfram gave a fascinating talk at TED about his work with Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha. Amongst other things, he pointed out how very simple computations can yield extremely complex behaviors. (He goes on to discuss his ambition for computing the entire physical universe. Say what you will… >>> More
what practical proofs are there about the Turing completeness of neural nets? what nns can execute c

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm interested in the computational power of neural nets. It is generally accepted that recurrent neural nets are Turing complete. Now I was searching for some papers which proofs this. What I found so far: Turing computability with neural nets, Hava T. Siegelmann and Eduardo D. Sontag, 1991 I… >>> More
How important is Discrete Mathematics for a Computer Scientist?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
As the title says, How important is Discrete Mathematics for a Computer Scientist? Background: I'm pursuing a Master's degree with a focus on fundamentals such as Algorithms, Complexity and Computability Theory and Programming Languages to get a good foundation for working in the field of Parallel… >>> More
Windows threading: _beginthread vs _beginthreadex vs CreateThread C++

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
What's a better way to start a thread? I'm trying to determine what are the advantages/disadvantages of _beginthread, _beginthreadex and CreateThread. All of these functions return a thread handle to a newly created thread, I already know that CreateThread provides a little extra information when… >>> More
Excel file reading with 2007 office connection string.

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Actually in my system having 2007 office then i am reading the 2003 .xls file with using the 2007 connection string string ConnectionString = "Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=" + Filename + ";Extended Properties=\"Excel 8.0;HDR=YES;\""; data is not reading. But if the first row first… >>> More