On 1/2/2011 9:23 AM, dpb wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
...

The only problem I'm having is grokking the difference between
stochastic and chaotic. I suppose there must be a enough difference
between random and disorderly for your system to work. I love this
kind of stuff. :-)

Indeed, there is a fundamental difference.

The beginning of the following link is on the line of the way I used to
try present it to the bleary-eyed utility guys who really only wanted to
know enough as to whether they thought it (the R&D project; EPRI is a
utility self-funded research organization so we had to have buy-in from
the member utilities to continue to have the resources to support the
effort) made enough sense to continue or not and like you, wanted at
least a grasp of the concept.

http://www.math.tamu.edu/~mpilant/math614/chaos_vs_random.pdf

I'd not read the Wikipedia entry on chaos; so often they're not of much
help so did--it's not terrible reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

For a non-technical read if you're interested in such things, I'd recommend

_Chaos: Making a New Science_ by James Gleick

It's the best written of several of the popular expositions imo for a
general overview of chaotic systems in natural processes.

For more esoteric approach, Benoit Mandelbrot is a stretch but two of
his at least summarized rather than actual papers include
_The_Fractal_Geometry_of_Nature_ and
_Fractals_and_Chaos:_The_Mandelbrot_Set_ and_Beyond_

Of course, there's an almost unlimited literature on turbulent flow but
other than how it's touched upon in some of the above as a field I don't
know of any popularization of the subject itself. The pneumatic
transport of solids is, of course, a subset within it with another whole
literature/history...

None of those will explain the processing we're doing; but they are an
interesting introduction into a whole (relatively) new way of looking at
much of the physical world.

--

Thanks for the links, I may comprehend it yet. :-)

TDD