Chaos Theory - Project ideas?

Iancar29

Hi folks , so I'm doing my final year Maths BSc project on Chaos Theory.

One reason why I chose it is because im really interested in Meteorology and it was one of few that I could somewhat relate to the subject.

I'm just wondering if you guys have any ideas or topics I should concentrate on other than the list I have here below..

• Dynamical systems ( weather and other nature examples )
• Stability
• Fixed-point & strange attractors
• Logistic equation and henon map

Also , if anyone knows of a book on the subject that I really should get hold of , then please post the details.

Cheers

Desmonddoyle

If your willing to consider subject matter outside of Meteorology, I was recently talking with an academic about topics for papers that came up in economics. One was applying chaos theory to the capital markets, and trying to prove that a particular economic market is chaotic, and then trying to make reasonable, short term predictions on the back of that. Good luck to him on that I thought - need to try and limit the complexities of the market chosen as much as possible, but at least the data will be there and its of topical interest.

I'd be dubious of its application and accuracy in the real world - but you could prove me wrong :-) In fact, if you can find a valuable way to apply chaos theory to economics or the financial markets, you'll definitely get a first.

Michael Collins

You could look into Control System theory applied to chaotic systems. I think this is a very interesting area - you could try to build a simulation of some kind of chaotic system, and show how you can control it e.g. double pendulum. There might be a lot of learning in it if you're not too well up on Control Theory (it's an subject within engineering), but at least you're well up on the maths - that's the real hard part!

onsetofchaos

A very very good book on Dynamical Systems and Chaos is "Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: With Applications To Physics, Biology, Chemistry, And Engineering (Studies in Nonlinearity)" by Steven Strogatz.