Description
Book SynopsisChaos and complexity explained, with illuminating examples ranging from unpredictable pendulums to London''s wobbly Millennium Bridge.The math we are taught in school is precise and only deals with simple situations. Reality is far more complex. Trying to understand a system with multiple interacting components—the weather, for example, or the human body, or the stock market—means dealing with two factors: chaos and complexity. If we don''t understand these two essential subjects, we can''t understand the real world. In Everyday Chaos, Brian Clegg explains chaos and complexity for the general reader, with an accessible, engaging text and striking full-color illustrations.
By chaos, Clegg means a system where complex interactions make predicting long-term outcomes nearly impossible; complexity means complex interacting systems that have new emergent properties that make them more than the sum of their parts. Clegg illustrates these phenomena with discu