Product Description

Chaos exists in systems all around us. Even the simplest system of cause and effect can be subject to chaos, denying us accurate predictions of its behaviour, and sometimes giving rise to astonishing structures of large-scale order. Our growing understanding of Chaos Theory is having fascinating applications in the real world - from technology to global warming, politics, human behaviour, and even gambling on the stock market. Leonard Smith shows that we all have an intuitive understanding of chaotic systems. He uses accessible maths and physics (replacing complex equations with simple examples like pendulums, railway lines, and tossing coins) to explain the theory, and points to numerous examples in philosophy and literature (Edgar Allen Poe, Chang-Tzu, Arthur Conan Doyle) that illuminate the problems. The beauty of fractal patterns and their relation to chaos, as well as the history of chaos, and its uses in the real world and implications for the philosophy of science are all discussed in this Very Short Introduction.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31134 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

About the Author
Leonard Smith is Senior Research Fellow in Mathematics at the University of Oxford, where he lectures on nonlinear dynamical systems and chaos.

Customer Reviews

Interesting, but not a very short introduction
This book aims to introduce the key concepts of chaos in a readable way, including no mathematics. The title is a bit misleading, since there are over 160 pages and the book covers some quite advanced concepts. Overall, the book attempts to cover too much material for a short introduction, and I feel that readers who are not already familiar with the topic will be left confused.

The first chapter leaps directly into the concepts of deterministic nonlinear systems and sensitive dependence, and includes a wide-ranging discussion of the work of scientists including Laplace, Newton, Franklin and Darwin.

The second chapter explains exponential growth nicely, with several examples. Chapter 3 introduces examples of dynamical systems and their associated concepts. Here, new concepts such as state space, fixed points and attractors arise very rapidly and I wonder whether they have time to sink in for the reader who is not already familiar with them. Some of the new concepts are not clearly defined.

Chapter 4, 'Chaos in mathematical models', describes the universal period-doubling cascade, the Lorenz system, the Henon map, delay equations and Hamiltonian chaos. Again, too many models are introduced too rapidly. Chapters 5 and 6 cover fractals, dimensions and Lyapunov exponents, the measures of chaos, and the book then moves on to real numbers on a computer, statistics, predictability, weather forecasts, climate change and finance, ending up with some philosophical remarks.

Although I quite enjoyed reading this book, I would not recommend it as an introduction to the subject.

Good. But you need a preliminary
The book introduces the chaos theory relatively in details (compared with "the quantum world" J.P which introduces the entire structure of quantum physics less than 90 pages). The chaos is a very new and popular theory. It is based on the dynamical system, or dating back further, integral by I.Newton. The book itself produces nothing extremely exciting but progressively, makes you learn a lot. I find it really helpful to scan the dynamical system part in my financial math textbook before reading it. My suggestion is that you understand some concepts on integral and dynamical system first. They may be rather naive compared with the chaos theory but they at least give you a basis to develop your thoughts.

A Great Introduction
A very readable introduction for anyone interested in nonlinear dynamics, time series, weather forecasting or climate modelling.