CHAOS THEORY IN REAL LIFE

It thrives across the universe, but also crops up in some everyday examples

Heart versus head

Parts of the human body may exhibit chaotic patterns. There’s some evidence that arrhythmia – when your heart beats out of rhythm – may occur in a chaotic way. It’s possible that our brain activity has chaotic tendencies, with some suggesting that electroencephalograms show it in action.

The natural world

Chaos is rife in the animal kingdom. Biologists studying the Canadian lynx have found that their population grows in a chaotic way. Small changes in food supplies, mating habits or the spread of diseases can become magnified into big differences in animal numbers.

Cottoning on

In 1963, Polish mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot found recurring patterns in data on cotton prices from 1900 onwards that suggest they vary in line with chaos theory. They didn’t follow the famous ‘bell curve’ as a lot of datasets tend to.

In a jam

Traffic jams can seem to clear suddenly and without any obvious cause. Tiny changes to the flow of cars can build into sizeable jams that vanish almost as soon as they arrive.

Harder to crack

Cryptographers – those responsible for setting and deciphering codes – are big users of chaos theory. A message is scrambled and unlocked using a series of keys, and some computerbased encryption methods – including online image encryption – utilise chaos maps to construct those keys.

Up to the job

Even the labour market hasn’t escaped the scrutiny of chaos theorists. The way we work, apply for jobs and move between companies could well follow chaotic patterns. Insights could lead to better decisions and a more streamlined workforce in the future.

Taking stock

The ups and downs of the stock market are notoriously hard to predict. That’s why the adage to success is ‘time in the market rather than timing the market’. It may be possible that chaos theory could reveal hidden patterns in the lightning-fast trades on the world’s exchanges.

Better understanding babies

The chaos in our lives starts early. Researchers have shown that they can better understand the warning signs of a condition called fetal hypoxia – where a developing fetus is starved of oxygen – if they model the situation using chaos theory.