When Edward Lorenz decided to run his meteorology test from a halfway point in order to save time he had no idea that he would stumble on one of the largest theories of our time. In 1961 he took the data from a computer printout and entered it into the system. The information he was using was the data sheets from a previous test he had run. Now wanting to shorten the time and reach what he wanted to study sooner he put the data from halfway through the test into the computer and went to go get a cup of coffee. When he returned the test was running at completely different levels. After looking into what could have caused this he discovered that the data he put in was not fully accurate. The computer reads data to the sixth decimal place. However, in order to save paper and space Lorenz had only printed out to the third decimal place. Lorenz had entered .506 and the system was really supposed to see .506127. So when he input the data even though the numbers were only off that thousandths of a point the simulated weather system ended up running into a different output.
With theses results Edward Lorenz was able to come up with his theory. Which eventually came to be known as the Butterfly Theory
. "The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done. So, in a month's time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen. Or maybe on that wasn't going to happen, does." (Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos, pg. 141). This theory is also known as Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions. A small change in the initial inputs can cause a drastic change in the long-term behavior of the system.
Chaos theory has been applied to many different points in the world. I have even run across a paper comparing Marxism to Chaos Theory. However, on of the most interesting things that I have come across is music created using chaos theory (http://www.organised-chaos.com/oc/index.html). As well as pictures that have been created using the information that is still being studied today. With the use of computers we are able to mathematically work out equations that we previously could not. I am still trying to fully grasp the concept behind chaos theory and what it might be used for in the future. Right now there are some that speculate that the human brain and DNA could be explained using these theorie
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