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CSCI 100
Think Like Computers
Lecture 12
Fall 2008
So far …
•We talked about –
How computers represent things
How computers represent decisions
How computers make rational decisions
How computers learn
What about …
•problems we don’t know how to solve ?
•We don’t have a good theory
•Problem too complicated
•Too costly to experiment with
•Computers can help!
Computer Simulation!
•Create models of things that you want to
represent
•Simulate their actions/interactions
•Run many times with random starting conditions
•Collect data
•Analyze data
The “Game of Life”
•Conway’s game of life
•Actually based on the (very intriguing!)
mathematical concept of Cellular
Automaton (CA)
1-Dimensional CA
•Cells form a line
•Each cell would live or die based on rules involving itself
and neighbours
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