Week Seven

The weeks are starting to go by faster as the end of my ten weeks at Tufts comes to an end. This week was filled with mostly research, though I did do a couple fun things outside of research. I had the opportunity to go see Blue Man group which was an amazing show. They interact with the crowd a lot which was tons of fun. They even game some people paintings they did while performing. I would have to say it was one of the funnest things I have done in Boston.

For our lunch meeting this week we had Chinese take out, which I love. I had sweet and sour chicken and crab rangoons. For reading group this week we only had one thing to read. Our reading was about probabilistic complexity classes. I found the reading interesting since I had never heard of most of the complexity classes we discussed though I knew of a couple from a theory class I had taken last spring.

I spent most of this week working on my research. I have been looking at oscillators in cellular automata using the game of life rule set. This week I took oscillators with periods two through fifty-seven and looked at them individually as I oscillated through their cycle. I was looking at any distinguishing shapes that appeared in other oscillators and any kind of behavior that I could use to categorize oscillators with. I was able to find a couple different still lifes and other small patterns that occurred in many of the low period oscillators. I was also able to group oscillators together based on their symmetry, average number of cells changing, and whether they were composed of a combination of smaller oscillators. I also started working on my poster and speech for the leadership alliance symposium I will be attending at the end of next week.