Talk:Greenberg–Hastings cellular automaton

arguments for noteworthiness

There was a proposal to delete this page due to lack of noteworthiness and an essay-like tone. I don't know what is meant by the second item, but I made the following arguments regarding noteworthiness. (The person who proposed the deletion seemed satisfied by these.) (I am new to posting on Wikipedia, but I read that I was supposed to list these reasons on this talk page.)

1. This was, as far as I know, the first published CA model of an excitable medium. A Google search for "Greenberg Hastings", with the quotes, gives about 3300 hits.

2. In the article on Cellular Automaton there is a list at the bottom of specific models. These all have Wikipedia articles. The first one is called "Brian's Brain". That is closely related to Greenberg-Hastings, in that there is only one small difference in the rules. The behavior is apparently quite different, however.

3. Google scholar reveals 199 citations, 16 in the last year. (The article cited is 35 years old.) A Google Scholar search for "Brian's Brain" returns 56 citations, 2 in the last year, though the article is newer than GH. Another CA model on the list is Langton's ant. That returns 77 total hits, 4 in the last year, though it also is newer. So GH has shown staying power.

4. Among the hits for GH in Google Scholar are articles by distinguished mathematicians with "Greenberg Hastings" as part of the title. This is quite rare for articles in math journals.

5. Again to compare with Brian's Brain and Langton's ant, more of the GH articles are in math journals, as opposed to CS and other topics. In math, at least, GH may have made more impact.

6, This model is also described in Wolfram's book "A new kind of science". I've added that citation.

7. The SIAM textbook cited (Society of Industrial and Applied MaTH) devotes a large part of chapter 6 to the GH model. (And as far as I know, none of the authors of the text know either Greenberg or Hastings personally.)

I think the main weak point in my article is that I don't know how to do the graphics I want. The Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction article has a .gif animation of basically the same thing. But I want something that shows why the patterns evolve, not just THAT they evolve. This could be done best if I could create an interactive graphic in which the pattern would evolve one step at a time when the viewer clicks on it. I don't know if this is possible, and I certainly don't know how to do it now. Advice would be appreciated. It is very hard to see exactly what is going on in the .gif animation.

If interactivity is not possible, I can try to prepare a series of snapshots, but this would not be as good, in my opinion.

Every GH pattern can be interpreted as interacting rotating spirals. This is seen in the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction .gif file and also on the external links given at the end of the article (which are themselves also evidence of noteworthiness).

There was a statement that the article was more like a stub. My impression is that stubs lack references. This article is short, but does have significant academic references, I believe. More from the list of 199 could be provided if needed. Perhaps it would be less like a stub if I could figure out how to add the graphics mentioned above. Sph110 (talk) 22:41, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

issues raised

Three issues have been raised with this article.

1. The number of in-line references. If I understand correctly what these are, there are three, which seem to me to document the items discussed in the text. There are also four supplementary references.

2. Divide into sections. It seems to me it is short enough that this is not necessary yet. I did split a paragraph in two.

3. Too technical. I think it depends on what you are comparing this with. I consider it more an article in mathematics than in computer science. As I discuss in the previous item on this page, it has had, in its 35 years, more impact in math than some other cellular automata, and perhaps less influence in CS or related topics. It is much less technical than many other math articles. See Euler's Method as just one of many examples.

As I mention in the previous post, I consider that the main weakness in the article is the lack of graphics. I hope to remedy this once I learn how. Sph110 (talk) 14:00, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

My thoughts:

1. You have only referenced the first paragraph, the rest needs inline citations too
2. The article would benefit from a section heading after the lead (first paragraph), perhaps "Overview" if that's appropriate.
3. Ask an experienced editor who understands the topic to review the language. If it can be simplified it should be.

Flat Out let's discuss it 12:42, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I hope I have addressed those issues. Thanks to you and others for the suggestions. Sph110 (talk) 17:38, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

The previous fix apparently took care of two of the three issues raised but still, an editor requested more references. I have added further in-line references and also moved some material into a new section, which was then augmented.

Apparently during the course of this edit, over a few days, there was another change made. I tried to compare, and as far as I can tell, I must have accidentally made that other edit myself. (No one else has yet contributed to this talk page.) So I replaced the whole text with my newest version. My apologies to anyone who might have also edited during this period but whose edit I did not detect. Please make your change again. Sph110 (talk) 14:39, 11 June 2013 (UTC)