Transients, cycles, and complexity in cellular automata
Howard A. Gutowitz · Physical Review A · 1991
An elementary context in which the computing ability of cellular automata is directly related to quantities of physical significance is discussed. In examples, it is found that no single statistic serves to measure the complexity of the behaviors produced. On this basis it is argued that the theory of distributions can be gainfully employed alongside computation theory and information theory in the study of the complexity of dynamical systems.