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I worked in the non-linear dynamics field for a few years and was never impressed by Gleick's book on Chaos. Maybe this one is better ...


I'd be interested in any recommendations you have for books about chaos/non-linear systems. I read Chaos in high school and it was a starting point for me to later explore fractals, IFSs, and attractors. My math skills were never good enough to study dynamic systems in college, but I still enjoyed learning about it at some level.

Since I've read several of Shannon's papers and other mathematical treatments of information theory (e.g. Kullback), I suspect this book will not shed additional technical light for me. However I can't deny that Gleick's writing has an inspirational quality to it that is engaging, as long as you are not reading it as a scientific treatment. I also read Genius and I understand why Gleick is considered almost along the lines of nonfiction fanfic.


> I'd be interested in any recommendations you have for books about chaos/non-linear systems

Strogatz's Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos might be a good place to start. It's not mathematically sophisticated at all, e.g. there are few proofs and topological methods are at best implicitly present; but it still has some real mathematical meat on it.


I'm curious if you liked Lorenz's book more (The Essence of Chaos).

As someone woefully unqualified to critique either, I'd be interested in the opinion of someone closer to the subject matter.


If you haven't also worked in information theory, you're probably going to like it better...




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