Dartblog
Special Feature: Give a Rouse
Whither the College on the Hill? Dartblog brings you news and commentary from Hanover and the world at large, including deep coverage of the maturing tenure of Dr. Kim.
Archived post
This is an archived post. Please click here to see the latest entries.
« Bureaucracy Problem? | Home | Should Americans have the Right to Discriminate? »
Esteemed Dartmouth Mathematician Dies
Dartblog regrets to report the passing of esteemed mathematician Edward Norton Lorenz ‘38, a pioneer in the branch of mathematics called “Chaos Theory.” He was 90 years old.
Chaos Theory is the study of “chaotic dynamical systems.” These are systems whose conditions through time are described by complicated things called non-linear differential equations. They have the fascinating property that a tiny, seemingly negligible change in the initial state of the system can cause the system to display wildly different behavior through time—so much so that the system appears random. This is “deterministic chaos.”
The most famous example of a chaotic system is the weather. The weather is so chaotic that whether or not a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, it is said, can influence whether or not there will be a tornado in Texas the following week. This is the popular butterfly effect—a term Dr. Lorenz coined.
Following in Dr. Lorenz’s footsteps, there is a new course at Dartmouth on chaotic systems. Math 53: Chaos! is the only course in the entire curriculum with an exclamation point in its name.
Featured posts
-
October 18, 2009
When Love Beckoned in 52nd Street
We were at San Francisco’s BIX last evening, enjoying prosecco, cheese, and a bit of music. A full year of inhabitation in Northern California has unraveled to me no decent venue for proper lounging, but… -
October 9, 2009
D Afraid of a Little Competish
So our colleague and Dartblog writer Joe Asch informed me that the D has rejected our cunning advertising campaign. Uh-oh. The Dartmouth is widely known as a breeding ground for instant New York Times successes,… -
September 4, 2009
How Regents Should Reign
As Dartmouth alumni proceed through the legal hoops necessary to defuse a Board-packing plan—which put in unhappy desuetude an historic 1891 Agreement between alumni and the College guaranteeing a half-democratically-elected Board of Trustees—it strikes one… -
August 29, 2009
Election Reform Study Committee
If you are an alum of the College on the Hill, you may have received a number of e-mails of late beseeching your input for a new arm of the College’s Alumni Control Apparatus called… -
August 23, 2009
Fare Thee Well, Tom Crady
And now Dean Tom Crady has precipitously announced his departure from the College after only 20 months on the job. How to read this? By way of background, prior to coming to Dartmouth, Crady had… -
May 31, 2009
Kangaroo Court, Indeed
In an interview with The Dartmouth, alumni-elected trustee T.J. Rodgers ‘70 explained his reasons for declining to participate in future evaluations of trustees up for “re-election,” namely the “kangaroo court” nature of such discussion in…