TRIANGLE by Rick Lawsha 7:44pm Feb 07,1989




This program demonstrates chaos and randomness using a three point
triangle. The inspiration for TRIANGLE came about after watching a
NOVA program, an excellent PBS science series.

The program works by picking the three corners of a triangle and
jumping around from there. Consider the drawing below...

1 The 3 corners we will call points 1, 2 and 3.
/ \ Also, imagine you have a 3 sided die which you
/ \ can roll for a 24 hour period.
2-------3



1 Roll the die once and jot down the number. Let's
/ \ say you rolled a 2. We put a mark by the 2.
/ \
*-------3


1 Now, roll the dice again. This time we get
/ \ hmm... let's say a 3. Okay, now draw an
/ \ imaginary line from your last point (2) to
*---*---3 the next number which is a 3. Place another
dot HALFWAY between the 3 and your last dot.


1 Roll the die again, let's say we get a 1
/ \ this time. Place a dot halfway between
/ * \ your last dot and the number you rolled.
*---*---3 Now we have 3 dots and it looks like this.


Continue to roll the die for about 24 hours and see what happens.
Most people assume that the inner part of the triangle will fill
with dots on a random basis. Run the triangle progam to see what
happens. Something very interesting occurs.....

I have included the QuickBASIC source for TRIANGLE so that you
can see there are no tricks going on here. I hope you have fun
with this program.



Rick Lawsha, STORK RBBS (309) 342-0637