'''Entry on: November 27th 2016 by Luv Kapur'''

=== Algorithm Description ===

Comway's Game of Life is a algorithmic representation of cellular automation developed by John Conway in 1970. The game is played on an infinite two-dimensional rectangular grid of cells. Each cell has two probable states, alive or dead. Depending on the state of that cell's 8 neighbors, the state of each cell changes each turn of the game, constituting a unique generation on every computation . Neighbors of a cell are cells that touch that cell, either horizontal, vertical, or diagonal from that cell.

The initial pattern is the first generation. The second generation evolves from applying the rules simultaneously to every cell on the game board, i.e. births and deaths happen simultaneously. Afterwards, the rules are iteratively applied to create future generations. For each generation of the game, a cell's status in the next generation is determined by a set of rules.

=== Rules ===

The rules of the game are simple, and describe the next generation of cells in the grid:

* '''Survival''': a cell survives from time t to time t + 1 if and only if 2 or 3 of its neighbors are alive at time t

=== Examples ===

Using the above two dimensional infinite playground and rules as outline above, the following patterns emerge during various cell positions during various generations.

* Still Life Patterns

[[File:still_life_example.png|600px|thumb|center|alt| Still Life Patterns]]

=== Serial Implementation ===

The serial implementation of the above algorithm divides the problem in two three distinct classes.