7.15. Glossary¶
Cellular Automaton (CA): Is a model of a world with very simple physics. “Cellular” means that the world is divided into discrete chunks, called cells. An “automaton” is a machine that performs computations — it could be a real machine, but more often the “machine” is a mathematical abstraction or a computer simulation.
Church-Turing Thesis: The claim that these definitions of computability capture something essential that is independent of any particular model of computation
Cross-Correlation: Selecting elements from an array and adding them up
Falsifiability: A hypothesis is this if there is an experiment, at least in the realm of practicality, that would contradict the hypothesis if it were false.
Pseudo-Random Number Generators (PRNGs): Programs that produce random-seeming numbers.
Turing Complete (Universality): Means that they can compute any computable function. Universality
Unfalsifiable: A hypothesis is this if there is no way to have an experiment, at least in the realm of practicality, that would contradict the hypothesis.