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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapters 3-4.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is a branch of physics which employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena?
(a) Theoretical physics.
(b) Thermodynamics.
(c) Fluid dynamics.
(d) Bifurcation theory.

2. In what year did Benoit Mandelbrot recognize the ghost of an idea when he spotted a diagram charted out on the blackboard in Hendrik Houthakker's office?
(a) 1960.
(b) 1957.
(c) 1954.
(d) 1950.

3. In Chapter 4, "A Geometry of Nature," Houthakker explained to Mandelbrot the diagram in his office represented eight years of what?
(a) Wheat prices.
(b) Cotton prices.
(c) Almond prices.
(d) Corn prices.

4. When was Robert May born?
(a) 1935.
(b) 1947.
(c) 1938.
(d) 1944.

5. Who is attributed with the following quote in the beginning of Chapter 3, "Life's Ups and Downs": "The result of a mathematical development should be continuously checked against one's own intuition about what constitutes reasonable biological behavior"?
(a) Stanislaw Ulam.
(b) Harvey J. Gold.
(c) Steven Smale.
(d) Benoit Mandelbrot.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was the name of the computer manufacturing and retail division of Royal Typewriter which made the early computers RPC 4000 and RPC 9000?

2. In statistics, what refers to any statistical relationship between two random variables or two sets of data?

3. When was Edward Lorenz born?

4. Where is the main laboratory for the Thomas J. Watson Research Center?

5. What concept originated by Thomas S. Kuhn refers to the routine work of scientists experimenting within a paradigm, slowly accumulating detail in accord with established broad theory and not actually challenging or attempting to test the underlying assumptions of that theory?

(see the answer key)

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