Context free grammar

Friday 10 November, 2006 (Geek)

I am always looking out for geeky, fun stuff on the Internet. SCIgen is a typically geeky implementation of advanced mathematics and its fun! SCIgen is a generator for random Computer Science research papers. Some papers have been submitted to real conferences and even been accepted which really is quite amazing!

Now I am not a mathematician but I think that I have understood a little bit of what a context free grammar actually is. A more mathematical description can be found here: http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/ContextFreeLanguage.html. As far as I understand context free grammar is a set of rules that create rule-based patterns. These patterns can then be combined as nodes in other patterns using the same rules.

Mathematical notation is built up like this: the rule is that a number is followed by an operator and then another number 1 + 2. These can then be combined again as a node in the pattern: (1 + 2) + 3. Or two patterns could be combined: (1 + 2) + (3 + 4).

With these rules we can build enormous structures where the parts of the overall pattern have no common context or structure, they just follow the same rules. With these mathematical structures it is possible to do all sorts of cool stuff that is completely random but has a cohesive look and structure.

Context Free Art – maths based art.
SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator – maths based writing.

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