Talk:Breeder (cellular automaton)

Types of breeder

Can we get sub-pages or sections on the different types of breeder? Is a greayship a type of breeder? Why is a glider gun not a type of breeder (trust me it is not but why?) Alan2here (talk) 12:10, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

A gilder gun is not a breeder because it grows linearly. In other words, if you plot a graph of live cells versus time, it will approximate a straight line. However, a breeder (by definition) grows quadratically. If you plot a graph of live cells versus time, it will approximate a parabola.

Some greyships can grow quadratically (in which case they become so-called space-fillers). They are slightly different from breeders, however, in that they work by expanding a single island, rather than creating independent objects. Although this distinction is partly a matter of taste, I would prefer to create a new page on space-fillers. — Hyperdeath^(Talk) 12:40, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

tyvm for the info :¬) 86.14.214.175 (talk) 23:10, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Charts of cell count

Do the charts of cell count versus generation really need to be combined into an animation? Surely it would be much clearer to have a single still image for each. — Hyperdeath^(Talk) 17:07, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I think that would probably take up too much space on the page. Space is limited on a stub article to one or two images. --Simpsons contributor (talk) 03:46, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

No it isn't. The article (being a stub) has insufficient text, but it isn't a solution to have an insufficient number of images as well. The aim of an any article is to be as informative as possible, and if that (at present) requires an imbalance between the image count and the text length, then so be it. — Hyperdeath^(Talk) 11:33, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree, they should be separated. In addition, it would be nice to have an image of the generating pattern next to each graph. 84.9.145.45 (talk) 21:49, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

There is a more serious problem with the graphs. Why should every breeder of a given class have the exact same population-time graph? In order for the information to make any sense, we would have to know which SMM breeder, which MSM breeder, which MMS breeder and which MMM breeder these are graphs of.

But if we are going to have graphs of different breeders, why have them separate? Why not plot them all on a single graph? This would also solve another problem with the animation: that the scale jumps about. And the name of the file is meaningless as well - "Chart animation.gif"? But this is another matter.

I've nominated it for deletion. I think that if we're going to have graphs like this we need to take a fresh approach. Would anybody like to hear my thoughts on this? — Smjg (talk) 16:28, 22 March 2014 (UTC)