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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. When was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology founded?
(a) 1823.
(b) 1895.
(c) 1861.
(d) 1877.

2. When was James Yorke born?
(a) 1949.
(b) 1932.
(c) 1941.
(d) 1937.

3. 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?
(a) Bland science.
(b) Psuedoscience.
(c) Normal science.
(d) Science of commonality.

4. What was the name of Edward Lorenz's 1963 paper in Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences?
(a) "Fractals Everywhere".
(b) "Physical Review Letters".
(c) "Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow".
(d) "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions".

5. What refers to the sensitive dependence on initial conditions; where a small change at one place in a nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state?
(a) Pufferfish effect.
(b) Kangaroo effect.
(c) Butterfly effect.
(d) Hummingbird effect.

6. In the 1950s and 1960s what two technologies were maturing together, according to the author in Chapter 1, "The Butterfly Effect"?
(a) The television and automobile.
(b) The automobile and space stellite.
(c) The space satellite and digital computer.
(d) The digital computer and television.

7. Although James Yorke was a brilliant mathematician, he often referred to himself as what?
(a) A philosopher.
(b) A martyr.
(c) A monk.
(d) A rebel.

8. In Chapter 3, "Life's Ups and Downs," Gleick writes, "In the emergence of chaos as a new science in the 1970s, _____ were destined to play a special role."
(a) Geologists.
(b) Botanists.
(c) Ecologists.
(d) Paleontologists.

9. When was Steven Smale born?
(a) 1938.
(b) 1932.
(c) 1943.
(d) 1930.

10. What was the profession of Benoit Mandelbrot's mother?
(a) Housekeeper.
(b) Dentist.
(c) Writer.
(d) Nurse.

11. When was Edward Lorenz born?
(a) 1914.
(b) 1921.
(c) 1924.
(d) 1917.

12. The National Weather Service is one of the six scientific agencies that make up what division of the U.S. Government?
(a) The U.S. Coast Guard.
(b) The Interior Department.
(c) The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
(d) The U.S. Navy.

13. What can be formed by taking a finite Cartesian product of the Cantor set with itself, making it a Cantor space?
(a) Euclidean space.
(b) Cantor dust.
(c) Helium in a Box.
(d) Fractal.

14. According to Gleick in Chapter 3, "Life's Ups and Downs," what will lead to an increased, steady state in the idealized population?
(a) A multiplier parameter.
(b) A lower parameter.
(c) A higher parameter.
(d) A fraction parameter.

15. What were the subjects allowed to glance at one at a time in the experiment from the 1940s described by Gleick in Chapter 2, "Revolution"?
(a) Ink blots.
(b) Nature photographs.
(c) Playing cards.
(d) Postage stamps.

Short Answer Questions

1. 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"?

2. James Yorke is credited with creating what term in reference to science?

3. What is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere?

4. From what institution did Thomas S. Kuhn earn his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics?

5. One of the implications of what theorem is that if a continuous discrete dynamical system on the real line has a periodic point of period 3, then it must have periodic points of every other period?

(see the answer keys)

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