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The butterfly effect is a theorem of chaos theory that small variations in the initial conditions of a dynamical system can produce large variations in the results.
Edward Lorenz first analyzed the effect in a 1963 paper for the New York Academy of Sciences . According to the paper, "One meteorologist remarked that if the theory were correct, one flap of a seagull's wings would be enough to alter the course of the weather forever." Later speeches and papers by Lorenz used the more poetic butterfly, possibly inspired by the 1952 Ray Bradbury short story A Sound of Thunder. In that story, a time traveller accidentally steps on a butterfly in the distant past, causing broad changes in the present. A common description of the effect says that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas months later. A version from Car Talk is that "A butterfly flaps its wings in Africa, and the sink backs up in your garage."
The practical consequence of the butterfly effect is that complex systems such as the weather or the stock marketA stock market is a market for the trading of publicly held company stock and associated financial instruments (including stock options, convertibles and stock index futures). Traditionally such markets were open-outcry where trading occurred on the floor are difficult to predict over any useful time range. Finite models that attempt to simulateA simulation is an imitation of some real device or state of affairs. Simulation attempts to represent certain features of the behavior of a physical or abstract system by the behavior of another system. Simulation is used in many contexts, including the these systems necessarily discard information about the system and the timing of events. These errors are magnified as each unit of time is simulated until the error bound on the result exceeds one hundred per cent.
1 Pop Culture Sightings
"Chaos Butterfly" is a recurring strip in Super-Fun-Pak ComicsTom the Dancing Bug is a weekly comic strip by Ruben Bolling which presents critical commentary on modern life, current events, and conventional wisdom and cliches. Apparently there are no bugs or dancing involved, and there are no characters named Tom., part of Tom the Dancing BugTom the Dancing Bug is a weekly comic strip by Ruben Bolling which presents critical commentary on modern life, current events, and conventional wisdom and cliches. Apparently there are no bugs or dancing involved, and there are no characters named Tom..
2 External links
Chaos theory
