Chaos — where it appears
Named by 3 essays across one field — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.
The road paved with doublings
Turn one dial slowly and watch what a map settles into. It settles on a point, then on two points, then four, then eight — faster and faster, and the doublings run out at a parameter that is finite.
A difference too small to draw
Two starting points a ten-thousandth apart, under the same rule, with nothing random anywhere. Within forty steps they have nothing in common — and the rule was not doing anything to them that it does not do to everything.
How fast two orbits part
The word "sensitive" is an adjective. Averaging the logarithm of one derivative along an orbit turns it into a number — one that says how many steps of prediction the map allows, and whose sign says whether it allows any.
Named alongside it
The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.
Logistic mapBifurcationOrbitSensitive dependenceAttractorAverageDerivativeDeterminismIterationLogarithmLyapunov exponentPeriod doubling