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
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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?

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