Readings

• Chaos, JP Crutchfield, JD Farmer, NH Packard, RS Shaw, Scientific American 255 (1986) 46–57.
• Odds, Stanislaw Lem, New Yorker 54 (1978) 38–54.

Topics:

1. Introduction and motivations
   1. The Industrial Age and the development of thermodynamics
   2. The Information Age and what?
   3. Deterministic chaos—Nature actively produces information
   4. What is randomness? Where does it come from?
   5. The failure of classical mathematics
   6. Computing as the solution
   7. Logic of the course:
      1. Complex systems: order and chaos
      2. Self-organization: emergence of complexity
   8. Goals:
      1. Unpredictability has a shape and a regularity
      2. You can quantify unpredictability
      3. Interactive simulation and visualization tools
2. Class survey: Interests, background, and abilities
3. Course logistics
4. Homework, exam, and project
5. Software tools and program development
6. Reading for next meeting: Articles above and Strogatz, chapters 1 and 2.
7. Homework: Everyday unpredictability (see website)