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arXiv · 1503.04249

Odd-Rule Cellular Automata on the Square Grid

Shalosh B. Ekhad·N. J. A. Sloane·Doron Zeilberger
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Abstract

An "odd-rule" cellular automaton (CA) is defined by specifying a neighborhood for each cell, with the rule that a cell turns ON if it is in the neighborhood of an odd number of ON cells at the previous generation, and otherwise turns OFF. We classify all the odd-rule CAs defined by neighborhoods which are subsets of a 3 X 3 grid of square cells. There are 86 different CAs modulo trivial symmetries. When we consider only the different sequences giving the number of ON cells after n generations, the number drops to 48, two of which are the Moore and von Neumann CAs. This classification is carried out by using the "meta-algorithm" described in an earlier paper to derive the generating functions for the 86 sequences, and then removing duplicates. The fastest-growing of these CAs is neither the Fredkin nor von Neumann neighborhood, but instead is one defined by "Odd-rule" 365, which turns ON almost 75% of all possible cells.

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Shalosh B. Ekhad, N. J. A. Sloane, Doron Zeilberger. 2015-03-13. Odd-Rule Cellular Automata on the Square Grid. https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.04249

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