Chaos Theory

A branch of mathematics that studies the behaviour of dynamic systems, in particular those which can be simply modelled but exhibit apparently unpredictable (or chaotic) results.

As a result of this sensitivity, which manifests itself as an exponential growth of perturbations in the initial conditions, the behaviour of chaotic systems appears to be random. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future dynamics are fully defined by their initial conditions with no random elements involved. This behaviour is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.

The interest in these systems stems from the fact that they were originally observed in natural systems, such as the weather. This may be explained by a chaos-theoretical analysis of a mathematical model of such a system, embodying the laws of physics that are relevant for the natural system.

The results of Chaos Theory have direct relevance (via Information Theory) for Information Architecture.

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The following pages link to here: Complexity, Information Theory, Theory