My Final Project for CS 448 Machine Learning examines Conway Game of life simulation with bots created through the implementation of a genetic algorithm. The goal is to find new, infinitely propagating configurations in the game of life and to find the most successful configuations in the process.
The game of life is an attempt to replicate cellular automaton. Each cell exists with a set of rules.
- If a cell has less than two neighbors it dies, emulating underpopulation.
- If a cell has two or three neighbors, it lives.
- If an empty cell has three neightbors it becomes a live cell, emulating reproduction.
- If a cell has more than three neighbors it dies, emulating overpopulation.
The game was initially created when Conway began experimenting with two-dimensional cellular atomaton in 1968. His hope was to find unpredictable cell automaton with no extreme growth, but still attaining unpredictable outcome.
John Conway was a brilliant mathematician who became interested in games at university. He was able to join his passion for mathematics and games in numerous ways, the Game of Life being the result of one of these pursuits.
Conway disliked the game of life after creating it, as it overshadowed many of his other accomplishments. Besides creating the game of life Conway contributed to mathematics, theoretical physics and cognitive science as a whole throughout his life. He discovered a counterexample to the intermediate value theorem with a continous function that takes every real value on a real line. He proved any integer can be written as a sum of 37 numbers raised to the fifth power. He proved the theoretical free will theorem, a version of a principal in quantum mechanics, and much much more.
Unfortunately, Conway died April 11th, 2020 from COVID-19.
We will remember John Conway for all of his contributions to mathematics, technology, and the advancement of our understanding.