Registered: Dec 2004
Posts: 3

I'm in 11th grade at high school and am doing a program called the International Bachaloriat. Part of this program is a peice of independant research and the deadline is comming by which time we have to select our topics. I have chosen to do mine in mathematics. My hypothetical topic was going to be "Using Cellular Autonoma to Model Organic Systems". Do you think that this is a plausible topic and/or will have enough mathematics such that I could justify it as a peice of research on Mathematics. Thank you for your time.

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Registered: Dec 2004
Posts: 3

Please help, I need to make a decision before the the christmass holidays.

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Registered: Jan 2004
Posts: 16

Sam, do you have a clear idea of where you want to take your research? Normally I would advise someone in high school to look at extending some preexisting research, but since I didn’t let that stop me when I was in high school, I’m sympathetic to some one who feels up to taking on a more serious challenge.

First I would look through the NKS Bibliography and see if I was interested in and could understood one of the pieces of research listed. If that doesn’t help, then there is a good chance that you won’t find an appropriate area of the research elsewhere. This isn’t an area of research with many people in it. I suspect that folks on this conference are nervous about giving bad advice because they don’t have a crystal clear idea of what they might be getting you involved with.

Maybe you have a clear idea of what you want to do, but you just don’t know how practical it is. If so, then maybe you could do a one-page outline of your proposed project. If you don’t have a clear enough idea of a project to be able to do so, then you will probably have problems doing independent research in a new area. Since I don’t know how mathematically mature you are, how strong you are in computer programming, and I don’t have an idea of the scope of your interest, I can’t really give you any better advice than that. If you can provide more information I might be able to give you some better advice.

Good Luck,
Daniel Geisler

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Registered: Mar 2004
Posts: 132

Sam,

I should've replied sooner. I did a little research on ib, there is very little information on the internet about it. I still dont know exactly the expected scope of your independent research program, but I assume that you have a good idea and that the extent to which you intend to take it has already been thought out.

I'm a senior in high-school and have done speeches on NKS topics for classes, namely on the growth of plants and animals and issues in biology. I dont think that they are on the same level as what you are talking about. I do think that cellular automata wont be refuted by whoever is reviewing your material as not a part of mathematics. Cellular Automata have simple boolean equivalents and can be represented in that way just as easy as in the scheme Wolfram uses in his book. In fact, the book mentions these on pages 616, 869, and 884.

If you ask me, modeling organic systems with cellular automata seems extremely broad. I can imagine such a project in the NKS Open Problems and Projects being labelled as requiring a background of at least college level background and expected to be in the format of at least a large monograph. Like I said, I'm not sure what your intent is. It is certainly a subject that can be broken up into many small parts. And for example, one can make quite topic just out of, say, the growth pattern of just one particular type of cell in the body, like the lens cells of an eye.

If you do choose to tackle the whole subject at once, which is something that I personally would be more likely to end up trying, then take this one piece of advice: your CA models, if done correctly, should not in general look much like the actual organic system. All you need to do to capture just a few general features of the system with your CA for your model to be successful. The key is to keep everything very simple, while capturing a few general features, even if the mechanism seems to be to simple to actually have a meaningful corrolation.

I highly suggest reading the beggining of chapter 8 of NKS and its notes. If you have the slightest urge to do this particular research project, then charge forth my friend! Age doesn't seem to stop me. Also, definitely look at the NKS bibliography to see what others have done. A brief scan of my own shows multiple sources on cellular automata as models for biological systmes. Have an adventure!

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Registered: Dec 2004
Posts: 3

Daniel, Thank you very much, I am extremely buzy today but I will try and write up an outline and consolidate my ideas over the weekend.

Jesse, the bit of Wolfram's book on modeling plants and animals was in fact what prompted me to chose my general topic. I thought the idea that this was possible was absolutely fascenating. I will look at these idea's and some more, more closely over the weekend.

Once again thank you both for your replies they have really helped me in my decision. Next time I will post more information about my topic.

If anyone wishes to know more about the IB here are two links that my school has put up to help inform people (I dont know if you previously saw them)

http://www.ecolint.ch/webpage.asp?c=1&l=en&catid=215
and here is one just on Extended Essays
http://www.ecolint.dpn.ch/public/Ch...e%20English.pdf

Once again thank you both very much for your time

[edit] The other idea that I had not yet explored at all but seemed very interesting and maybe slightly more feasable(??) was that of using Cellular Autonoma as a means of cryptography. II will do more research over the weekend.[/edit]

Last edited by Sam Schoenholz on 12-09-2004 at 07:26 AM

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