Systems Thinking and Chaos

Understand the complex human factors challenges associated with change. Increase your tolerance to uncertainty. 

“Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future." (Edward Lorenz)

We can encounter chaos in every system around us - even the smallest and simplest ones. Any system can fall into chaos, which prevents us to accurately predict its behavior. Even a small change in the initial conditions can lead to unexpectedly large-scale consequences. Therefore, we can often enter in panic, blame actors for events they are not responsible for, and our sense of security in the world can generally decrease. 

This book is a primer to nonlinear system dynamics and chaos where the author presents analytical methods through real-life examples and easy mathematical calculations. By the time you listen to this book, you’ll understand why some events are out of human control, but there are still ways to manage and live with unpredictability and chaos.

The book is structured systematically, starting with differentiating linear and nonlinear systems, first-order differential equations, bifurcations, phase transition analysis, oscillations, chaos, iterated maps, period doubling, fractals, and strange attractors.

Systems Thinking and Chaos sheds light to why sometimes life sometimes unfolds counterintuitively to expectations, how small changes can lead to tremendously big ones over time.

• Learn the difference between linear and nonlinear systems.
• Deepen your knowledge about the additivity and homogeneity principle.
• How to use synergy and interference in real life?
• What are feedback loops and how can they generate equilibrium?
  

Explore and fix the “problems that never seem to go away”.

• Learn about the importance of exponentials, power law, and long tail distribution.
• Detailed introduction to chaos theory and the butterfly effect.
• Phase transitions, bifurcation, and strange attractors.
• Discover the world of fractals.

Our beliefs are veritable lenses, which enable us to see, to analyze, to understand the world around us. But the beliefs that in the past helped us to see the world no longer do so, because the world has changed much too fast for our lenses to adapt. Chaos theories provide new lenses we need to understand our fast-phased, chaotic world. 

Get introduced to the world of chaos. Learn about the Raleigh-Benard instability, Metcalf’s Law, Edward Lorenz’s discovery of the Butterfly Effect, Benoit Mandelbrot’s concept of fractals, the Koch snowflake, and others.