Conway's game of life
From Conservapedia
Conway's game of life (CGL) deals with a cellular automaton game called Life, which was meant to simulate the ecology of one-celled creatures. It was invented by John Conway in 1970. [1]
CGL is a simple game were by random squares on a grid are filled. These are deemed to be "alive". Under a set rule based on the number of filled adjacent cells a cell either continues to live, die or is born.
Despite being based on simple rules the outcome cannot be estimated in advance, only by running the simulation can you get any results. Despite it being based on a random begin and the rules being simple, patterns form very easily. One of the most common being the glider pattern.
CGL have become increasingly studied in ecology as it give an interesting perspective on the behaviouer of ecosystems. It is often cited as an example of how evolution can occur in that with a simple rules and random starting positions complex patterns can form.
In mathematics it is cited as an example of chaos.
References
The Science of Discworld 2: The Globe by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, has a good easy to understand discrition of Conway's game of life.
