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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. 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) 1950.
(b) 1957.
(c) 1960.
(d) 1954.

2. James Yorke realized that one of the largest problems with his work was that mathematicians and physicists were often worlds apart because they did not what?
(a) Follow the same rules.
(b) Report to work at the same time.
(c) Use the same equipment.
(d) Speak the same language.

3. What studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions?
(a) Nonlinear system.
(b) Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow.
(c) Butterfly effect.
(d) Chaos theory.

4. For what company had Benoit Mandelbrot been working in economics, studying distribution of various incomes in the economy when he was invited by Houthakker to speak at Harvard?
(a) IBM.
(b) Iterated Systems Incorporated.
(c) ProtoLife.
(d) Xerox.

5. In statistics, what refers to any statistical relationship between two random variables or two sets of data?
(a) Dependence.
(b) Prediction.
(c) Diversity.
(d) Commonality.

6. What is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services?
(a) Physiology.
(b) Information theory.
(c) Economics.
(d) Chaos theory.

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

8. What refers to a supercomputer manufacturer based in Seattle, Washington, and founded in 1972?
(a) More.
(b) Bend.
(c) Cray.
(d) Ting.

9. Who is attributed with the following quote in Chapter 4, "A Geometry of Nature": "And yet relation appears, a small relation expanding like the shade of a cloud on sand, a shape on the side of the hill"?
(a) Wallace Stevens.
(b) Enrico Fermi.
(c) Robert May.
(d) James Yorke.

10. What mathematical theorem states that every simply connected, closed 3-manifold is homeomorphic to the 3-sphere?
(a) Poincare conjecture.
(b) Information theory.
(c) No-slip condition.
(d) Fractal compression.

11. What work by Edward Lorenz greatly impacted the thinking of James Yorke, as described in Chapter 3, "Life's Ups and Downs"?
(a) "Period Three Implies Chaos".
(b) "Fractals Everywhere".
(c) "Physical Review Letters".
(d) "Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow".

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

13. What is the mathematical study of changes in the qualitative or topological structure of a given family, such as the integral curves of a family of vector fields, and the solutions of a family of differential equations?
(a) Thermodynamics.
(b) Bifurcation theory.
(c) Theoretical physics.
(d) Fluid dynamics.

14. Where was Thomas S. Kuhn born?
(a) Spearfish, South Dakota.
(b) Omaha, Nebraska.
(c) Cincinnati, Ohio.
(d) Anchorage, Alaska.

15. What is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere?
(a) Thermodynamics.
(b) Meteorology.
(c) Physiology.
(d) Fractal compression.

Short Answer Questions

1. 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"?

2. What refers to a computer program or network of computers that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system?

3. What is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force?

4. What was the name of Edward Lorenz's 1963 paper in Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences?

5. Who is quoted in Chapter 1, "The Butterfly Effect" as saying "Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens next?"

(see the answer keys)

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