Content about “
chaos

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Chaos in the brain

Saying that someone is a chaotic thinker might seem like an insult - but, according to Lewis Dartnell, it could be that the mathematical phenomenon of chaos is a crucial part of what makes our brains work.
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101 uses of a quadratic equation: Part II

In issue 29 of Plus, we heard how a simple mathematical equation became the subject of a debate in the UK parliament. Chris Budd and Chris Sangwin continue the story of the mighty quadratic equation.

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Finding order in chaos

All of science can be regarded as motivated by the search for rules behind the randomness of nature, and attempts to make prediction in the presence of uncertainty. Chris Budd describes the search for pattern and order in chaos.
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Model behaviour

To study a system, mathematicians begin by identifying its most crucial elements, and try to describe them in simple mathematical terms. As Phil Wilson tells us, this simplification is the essence of mathematical modelling.
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Maths on the tube

During World Mathematical Year 2000 a sequence of posters were displayed month by month in the trains of the London Underground aiming to stimulate, fascinate - even infuriate passengers! Keith Moffatt tells us about three of the posters from the series.
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blurry image of people

Friends and strangers

Sometimes a mathematical object can be so big that, however disorderly we make the object, areas of order are bound to emerge. Imre Leader looks at the colourful world of Ramsey Theory.
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fractal

Fractal expressionism

In the late 1940s, American painter Jackson Pollock dripped paint from a can on to vast canvases rolled out across the floor of his barn. Richard P. Taylor explains that Pollock's patterns are really fractals - the fingerprint of Nature.
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Chaos in Numberland: The secret life of continued fractions

One of the most striking and powerful means of presenting numbers is completely ignored in the mathematics that is taught in schools, and it rarely makes an appearance in university courses. Yet the continued fraction is one of the most revealing representations of many numbers, sometimes containing extraordinary patterns and symmetries. John D. Barrow explains.
News story

Doing the twist

Perhaps the most sinister weather phenomenon in the world is the twister - that dark, dangerous funnel drooping from the clouds that weaves its way across the landscape, leaving a narrow trail of devastation in its wake.
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Extracting beauty from chaos

Images based on Lyapunov Exponent fractals are very striking. Andy Burbanks explains what Lyapunov Exponents are, what the much misunderstood phenomenon of chaos really is, and how you can iterate functions to produce marvellous images of chaos from simple mathematics.