Chaos

• Chaos theory is one of the most exciting and fast-growing areas of mathematics and physical science today.
• It unifies simplicity and complexity, and order and randomness, to give us a new understanding of a physical processes and events.
• Ideal for the non-mathematician - Leonard Smith uses accessible examples and terms to give the reader a full understanding of this exciting field.

Readership: An accessible introduction to chaos for the general reader without a maths background. Its imaginative use of analogies, literature, and history will also open questions for mathematics and science students and professionals. Of interest too to philosophy students.

Leonard Smith, Senior Research Fellow in Mathematics, University of Oxford

"Leonard Smith's Chaos (part of the Oxford Very Short Introduction series) will give you the clearest (but not too painful idea) of the maths involved... There's a lot packed into this little book, and for such a technical exploration it's surprisingly readble and enjoyable - I really wanted to keep turning the pages. Smith also has some excellent words of wisdom about common misunderstandings of chaos theory... One of the best books so far in this useful and informative series." - popularscience.co.uk

Preface
1: The Emergence of Chaos
2: Exponential Growth, Nonlinearity, Common Sense
3: Chaos in Context: Determinism Randomness and Noise
4: Chaos in Mathematical Models
5: Fractals, Strange Attractors, and Dimension(s)
6: Quantifying the Dynamics of Uncertainty
7: Real numbers, Real Observations and Computers
8: Sorry, Wrong Number: Statistics and Chaos
9: Predictability: Does Chaos Constrain Our Forecasts?
10: Applied Chaos: Can We See Through Our Models?
11: Philosophy in Chaos
Glossary
Further Reading