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From: PAAAAAR@CALSTATE.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Chaos theory for software engineering?
Message-ID: <8911271507.AA03928@mwunix.mitre.org>
Date: 27 Nov 89 15:02:09 GMT
Sender: root@athena.mit.edu (Wizard A. Root)
Organization: The MITRE Corp., Washington, D.C.
Lines: 37

Gordon Joly of Middlesex Hospital, LONDON W1N 8AA, U.K.
 asked:
> Has chaos
> only been observed in analogue physical systems?
I can give a definitive NO to this question.

Population dynamics (biological, discrete) exhibits "Chaos".

There is a tendency for the following kind of procedure to be "Chaotic"
when the effect of A;B is different to B;A.
procedure engima(A,B,C,D); begin while C do if D then A else B end;

We tripped over a couple examples
at a university near you in the 60's and 70's.

One of these was a generalisation of Pitteway's Conic Algorithm
and the other a silly and well known problem called "3n+1, divide by 2".

Whether anyone (a) remembers those days, (b) noticed the Chaotic connection
is another matter.

Try contacting M L V Pitteway, at Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middx, UK.

One day, when I have time I will publish a paper on "3n+1, divide by 2"
(probably under the head of Recreational Mathematics)

Dick Botting.
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Richard J. Botting,  Department of computer science,
California State University, San Bernardino,
5500 State University Parkway, San Bernardino CA 92407
PAAAAAR@CCS.CSUSCC.CALSTATE
paaaaar@calstate.bitnet
PAAAAAR%CALSTATE.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
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