Talk:Chaos theory/Archive 1

message: The Talk:Attractor page has a discussion on whether strange attractors need to be fractal.  The difficulty resides with the definition of a strange attractor.  The term strange attractor is often used as synonym for chaotic attractor with the assumption that fractional-dimensional attractor is the same as chaotic attractor.  They are not.   This topic was often discussed in the  sci.nonlinear and is now a FAQ (question 2.12) for that newsgroup.
I have made a small edit in the main article to reflect this point.   XaosBits 03:53, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Strange attractors

message: Does the section on Chaos Washing Machines really belong in this article? It sounds like a bunch of marketing hooey and self-promotion to me; I nominate that that whole section be moved to its own article if not outright delete. It sure doesn't sound encyclopeadic to me. - linas 20:48, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Chaos washing machines?? 

message: Work is currently in progress on a page entitled Views of Creationists and mainstream scientists compared.  Also currently being worked upon is Wikipedia: NPOV (Comparison of views in science) giving guidelines for this type of page.  It is meant to be a set of guidelines for NPOV in this setting.  People knowledgable in many areas of science and the philosophy of science are greatly needed here.  And all are needed to ensure the guidelines correctly represent NPOV in this setting.  :)  Barnaby dawson 21:10, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Invitation

message: I think it would be nice if there was a picture of a suitable fractal or something that illustrated an example of chaos theory.  Does anyone know anything suitable before I start looking?  WhiteC 20:51, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I would hate to see pictures of fractals appear here without an appropriate discussion of the connections between fractals and chaotic dynamics.  I think there are already too many books and articles out there that talk about chaos theory (either from a technical or more broadly accessible standpoint) and then just slap a pretty but inappropriate picture of a fractal on the cover without explaining why.  I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice to have pictures of fractals here.  I'm just suggesting we should hold off with pictures until it actually matches the text. CyborgTosser (Only half the battle) 22:29, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Picture of fractals

message: What is dynamical billiards?  Whenever I've played, it is always called billiards, pool or snooker.  The billiards article makes no mention of 'dynamical'.  Having such a link is confusing--are you trying to make some sort of point about billiards itself, or its associations with determinism/chaos theory?  I suppose you could use billiards to illustrate chaotic/dynamic systems if you wanted to, but it seems confusing to do so when billiards was often used as an example of a classical deterministic system.  WhiteC 17:59, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this means Sinai's billiards or Lorentz gas. Its a mathematical concept of bouncing a point particle around on an n-dimensional surface (often a torus).  See my web page Sinai's Billiards. BTW, note that page and its images are under GFDL. linas 00:27, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, that makes sense.  It is the link to the regular billiards article that confused me.  WhiteC 03:37, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: billiards

message: I removed AUTODYN.   It is a commercial package for solving complicated non-linear PDEs.   If simulation packages are going to be mentioned in the See also section, there are several other packages that are more in line with the content of the article. XaosBits 02:24, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, right, it doesn't belong here.  I think there is a category devoted to math software somewhere. linas 04:26, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  AUTODYN 

message: An anonymous user added the following paragraph:
:In layman’s terms, chaotic motion is akin to a dynamic system having a case where a single initial condition has more than one solution possible, so that there is no inherent method of selecting which feasible solution will be realized. Usually the two solutions from the same starting point are radically different from each other. Infinitesimal differences in initial conditions or parameters cause one solution to be selected over the other. The Chaos region would be a portion of the state space (trajectory positions and velocities) representing unique initial conditions that posses non-unique solutions.
I reverted this change because this is paragraph is incorrect in two ways. First of all a dynamic system cannot have more than one solution for the same initial conditions - what it can do is exhibit very different behaviours for two sets of initial conditions that are close to one another (perhaps arbitrarily close), but still different from one another. Secondly sensitive dependence on initial conditions is not a sufficient condition for chaos on its own - a pencil balanced on its end is very sensitive to initial conditions, but its final behaviour (lying on its side) is a stable fixed point, not chaotic. The additional conditions of transitivity and dense orbits are also necessary in any reasonable definition of chaotic behaviour. Gandalf61 10:05, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed incorrect paragraph

message: Greetings all. I'd just like to take a moment to mention that this article is pretty freaking heavy reading, and that's perfectly fine, but it would not hurt to maybe think about some ways to make the article a little more accessible. Now, I don't know diddly squat about chaos theory, so I'm gonna spend some time trying to see if I can work the prose around into something that is a bit more readable, and I'd welcome input to make sure I don't introduce anything innaccurate in so doing. I'll be asking here for help on clarifying anything I think needs more explanation. Cheers! Ëvilphoenix Burn! 07:12, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heavy reading