Paul Grobstein, Bryn Mawr College Department of Biology
Clare Congdon, Bryn Mawr College Computer Science Program

Lab 4: Randomness

The Game of Life (and cellular automata generally) should,together with previous explorations, have persuaded you that simple things interacting in simple (but non-linear) ways yield phenomena which are both interesting and unexpected. "Unexpected", however, does not, as shown by your Newton exploration, mean "random". The nature and role of "randomness" is an additional aspect of complex systems which we will focus on this week.

The Game of Life was used to show that complex systems can create order from disordered (random) starting points. Our concern this week is with the role of random processes acting during the iterative process of complex systems, that is with the possible generative role of a continuously present indeterminacy. The biological process of evolution certainly suggests that significant and orderly outcomes not only may arise form systems which have a continuous indeterminacy, and indeed that such indeterminacy may be essential to their function. "Randomness" and "indeterminacy" are related but not synonomous concepts, and we will discuss this in class. Since computers are better are simulating the former than the latter we will use "randomness" in the following, with the presumption that the understandings largely apply to "indeterminate" systems as well.

The Magic Sierpinski Triangle provides an example of the generation of form in a way which is dependent on continuously present randomness. Voyage to Serendip is intended to encourage thinking about the reasons why a continously present randomness might be important. You should work through this materials, with the general objective being to think about is to think about reasons why random elements might be important in complex systems (and models of them, and programming forms based in complex systems perspectives). A number of the available Starlogo models use random processes and you should look at some of these with the same general objective in mind.

Like last week, you should record your observations in your online journal. You should also, like last week, be advancing your modelling skills, exploring the web in relation to complex systems, and thinking about your first project.

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