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The Game of LifeSupplement 2

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Background

• The Game of Life was devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970.

• More sophisticated programs now exist, but are generally more complex.• The Game of Life uses simple rules to show how complex “artificial life”

can evolve or extinguish over generations.• The user interacts with the game by creating an initial configuration of

“cellular automata.” • The game has no further user interaction since changes are determined

by the initial configuration. • The universe of the Game of Life is a two-dimensional orthogonal grid of

square cells• Each cell can be in one of two possible states in each generation, either

alive or dead. • The cells interact with their eight neighbors that are directly horizontally,

vertically, or diagonally adjacent.

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Rules

• Four basic rules simultaneously apply at each step or generation:

– Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies by loneliness.– Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies by overcrowding.– Any live cell with two or three live neighbors survives unchanged to the

next generation.– Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbors comes to life.

• The version of the Game of Life we are using is known as “Golly.”

Taken verbatim (with some editing) from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life

Versions of the Game of Life and other cellular automata programs can be found on the web including via links from the above website

address.