Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!gatech!psuvax1!psuvm!uh2
From: UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Chaos theory for software engineering? sure but
Message-ID: <89276.124246UH2@PSUVM.BITNET>
Date: 3 Oct 89 16:42:46 GMT
References: <4125@pegasus.ATT.COM> <5309@eos.UUCP>
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 17


I don't know of any hard mathematical work, but if you are willing to accept
analogies, consider:

Most models exhibiting chaotic behavior share three traits.  (1) The system
is characterized by a state descritpion, (2) the system is embedded in an
environemnt that is also characterized by a state description, and (3) the
new state of the system depends in a non-linear way on the previous system
state and the environment state.

Now, to me, this sounds like an accurate though very abstract descritpion
of just about every big computer system I've ever seen.

What can we (tentatively) conclude?  We should expect our systems to be
very difficult to control.  Sounds like reality, no?

                                                    lee