Chris Ford

Bio [2007]
I am one of the founders of the Chicago Business Intelligence Group. We help our clients build analytical tools to understand their organizations.

After reading NKS five years ago and attending last year's conference in Washington, DC, I realized I did not feel well equipped to conduct my own experiments. That made me want to attend the 2007 Summer School, and I am very happy I did. Even though the end of the Summer School is really a beginning, I now feel like I have the ability to experiment with NKS in the directions I find most interesting. In addition to that, I met a great group of people.

Project Title
Visualization Techniques for Totalistic Cellular Automata on Cubic Networks Using Linear Embedding

Project
For my project, I shall attempt to develop good visualization techniques for dynamic networks using linear embedding. If I have enough early success with that, I shall try to extend that to include some external network data to try to find correlations that might exist by viewing the visualizations.

Favorite Outer Totalistic 3-Color Rule
Rule chosen: 883928

I like this rule because of the formation close to the initial conditions. I found similar structures created in other rules when I used the same last four digits of the rule, so I think it would be intriguing to review possibilities in finding these structures. As to the structures themselves, they remind me of arthropod formations, both in the symmetry (of the possible carapace) and in the similar structures that are formed.