What are the characteristics of a chaotic system?
Deterministic chaotic behavior is found in phenomena throughout the natural world — in dripping faucets and orbiting moons; in reacting chemicals and beating hearts; in spreading epidemics and predator-prey relationships; in financial markets and class grading patterns; and, of course, in the dynamics of the earth’s atmosphere. All these phenomena share common characteristics:– • Sensitive dependence on initial conditions, that is, starting from extremely similar but slightly different initial conditions, any complex system will rapidly move to different states. This behavior has two important implications:– • Exponential amplification of errors: Any mistakes in describing the initial state of a model of a complex system will guarantee completely erroneous results; and • Unpredictability of long-term behavior: Even extremely accurate starting data will not allow long-term results from a model. The model has to be stepped forward in time just a bit, the resulting data measured and pl
