FORMA
Forma, Vol. 9 (No. 1), pp. 11-28, 1994
Original Paper

A Cat's Cradle String Diagram Display Method Based on a Genetic Algorithm

Masashi Yamada, Hidenori Itoh, Hirohisa Seki and Rahmat Budiarto

Department of Intelligence and Computer Science, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Gokiso-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466, Japan

(Received September 21, 1993; Accepted February 3, 1994)

Keywords: Knot Theory, Topology, Genetic Algorithms, Graph Layout

Abstract. In the children's game of cat's cradle, many possible shapes can be generated from a simple closed string by several transformations. In this paper, we propose an overlapping diagram for the representation of the cat's cradle process, and show its properties. Also, we describe a method to generate cat's cradle shapes from the overlapping diagrams using a genetic algorithm (GA).