![]() ![]() Conor Stewart on It’s Switch Mode, But Not As You Know It.Ostracus on China’s Nuclear-Powered Containership: A Fluke Or The Future Of Shipping?.Matthias on It’s Switch Mode, But Not As You Know It.Hugo Oran on Liftoff! The Origin Of The Countdown.shod on DIY Cleats Give You Traction In Ice And Snow.shod on Hidden Wall-Mount Table Looks Like Hanging Art.mb on Absorbing Traffic Noise With Bricks Using Helmholtz Resonators.Bill on It’s Switch Mode, But Not As You Know It.Oliver on Beyond The Basics: Exploring Exotic Scope Trigger Modes.This Week In Security: Terrapin, Seized Unseized, And Autospill 5 Comments Posted in News, Slider Tagged conways game of life, game of life, John Horton Conway, obituary Post navigation If you haven’t yet had the pleasure, now’s a great time to take on the challenge. We’d love to celebrate his life by hearing your own stories of programming the Game of Life in the comments below. You could call it a mathematics gateway drug, grabbing the curiosity of the unsuspecting mind and pulling it down the rabbit hole of advanced mathematics discovery. And the effect on the person programming it for the first time can be long lasting. Small errors, or intentional tweaks, in the implementation have profound effects on behavior of the game. The game can be coded by a novice - and it’s become a common challenge in University course work. But the effect of this simplicity is not to be understated. The only parameters that are needed are the number and position of living cells at the start of the game, and the delay between each game frame. Four simple rules (which can be boiled down to three if you’re clever) determine which cells live and which cells die during each frame of the “game”. The game uses an infinite grid of squares where all of the edges of the grid wrap around. His original work on the concept used pencil and paper as the computing revolution had yet to make digital resources easily available, even to mathematics researchers like Conway. But by far the rockstar mathematics moment of developing Conway’s Game of Life in 1970 cements him a perpetual place of legend in computing lore. Many readers will be familiar with his Doomsday algorithm which can be used to deduce the day of the week for any given date in your head. A brilliant mathematician, he received numerous awards and was well known for his work in combinatorial game theory, group theory, and theoretical physics. He accepted a position at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge which he held until joining the faculty of Princeton University in 1987. On Saturday April 11th, 2020 its inventor and namesake, John Horton Conway passed away from COVID-19 at the age of 82.īorn in Liverpool, Conway received his PhD in mathematics in 1964 from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Programmers everywhere are familiar with Conway’s Game of Life: whether they’ve written a version themselves or simply seen the mesmerizing action resulting from the cellular automata, it’s a household name in all homes where code is spoken. ![]()
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