Thursday, July 21, 2005

Generating Random Boolean Sequences Using Cellular Automata

Today vbAccelerator became my favourite site for VB tips and great usable source code. Those of you that know me well, understand that programming in VB6 is not my idea of bliss, but sometimes it is the most effective tool available (as it is today).

One of the vbAccelerator tips that could be applied to almost any programming language demonstrates Generating Random Boolean Sequences Using Cellular Automata.

This is a randomisation method that the author adapted from Stephen Wolfram's book "A New Kind Of Science". Which is also available online. Unlike existing randomisation methods in VB, this allows for a much closer approximation of true randomness.

The embarrassing thing about this is that I've had this book gathering dust on my bookshelves for a while now, and I can think of at least one use of cellular automata that I could have applied since then!