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