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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Where was James Yorke born?
(a) Cheyenne, Wyoming.
(b) Plainfield, New Jersey.
(c) Flagstaff, Arizona.
(d) Portland, Oregon.

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

3. From what institution did Thomas S. Kuhn earn his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics?
(a) Princeton University.
(b) Harvard University.
(c) Stanford University.
(d) Loyola University.

4. 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) Hummingbird effect.
(b) Butterfly effect.
(c) Kangaroo effect.
(d) Pufferfish effect.

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?"
(a) Thomas S. Kuhn.
(b) Stephen Spender.
(c) Edward Lorenz.
(d) Richard Feynman.

Short Answer Questions

1. What, according to the author, are created out of things that have come to an end?

2. Who does Gleick quote as saying "It does not say in the Bible that all laws of nature are expressible linearily!" in Chapter 3, "Life's Ups and Downs"?

3. In mathematics, what is a system which does not satisfy the superposition principle, or whose output is not directly proportional to its input?

4. What is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy?

5. When was Thomas S. Kuhn born?

Short Essay Questions

1. When and where was the National Meteorological Center founded in Chapter 1, "The Butterfly Effect"? What existed before it?

2. What impact did The Structure of Scientific Revolutions have on the scientific community? What did Kuhn assert in the book?

3. In Chapter 3, "Life's Ups and Downs," one of the biggest questions came to be how different parameters affected the ultimate destiny of a changing population. What was the answer to this?

4. What two technologies contributed to the development of global forecasting in Chapter 1, "The Butterfly Effect"?

5. What role do computers and mathematical equations play in ecology and biology as described in Chapter 3, "Life's Ups and Downs"?

6. What were the biggest issues with weather forecasting during Lorenz's time as described in Chapter 1, "The Butterfly Effect"? How is the Butterfly Effect defined?

7. What led to Benoit Mandelbrot's epiphany in Chapter 4, "A Geometry of Nature"? Where was Benoit Mandelbrot working at the time?

8. In Chapter 2, "Revolution" Gleick refers to the pendulum as being the laboratory mouse of chaos, the new science. What metaphorical examples does Gleick give for other great scientists in this chapter?

9. How did the role of chaos theory affect ecologists in the 1970s as described in Chapter 3, "Life's Ups and Downs"?

10. How did Lorenz develop ways to reproduce complex behavior in Chapter 1, "The Butterfly Effect"?

(see the answer keys)

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