Computational Analysis of One-Dimensional Cellular Automata

Cellular automata provide one of the most interesting avenuesinto the study of complex systems in general, as well as having anintrinsic interest of their own. Because of their mathematicalsimplicity and representational robustness they have been used tomodel economic, political, biological, ecological, chemical, andphysical systems. Almost any system which can be treated in terms of adiscrete representation space in which the dynamics is based on localinteraction rules can be modelled by a cellular automata. The aim ofthis book is to give an introduction to the analysis of cellularautomata (CA) in terms of an approach in which CA rules are viewed aselements of a nonlinear operator algebra, which can be expressed incomponent form much as ordinary vectors are in vectoralgebra. Although a variety of different topics are covered, thisviewpoint provides the underlying theme. The actual mathematics usedis not hard, and the material should be accessible to anyone with ajunior level university background, and a certain degree ofmathematical maturity.