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Nonlinear Dynamics · 1976
- Equation
- xₙ₊₁ = r·xₙ·(1 − xₙ)
- Field
- Nonlinear Dynamics
- Named After
- Robert May
- Symbols
- xₙ this year's population, as a fraction of maximum · r the growth rate knob · iterate to get next year, and the next
- Year
- 1976
Significance
One line of arithmetic a child could iterate: below r ≈ 3 it settles, then oscillates, then doubles and doubles again — and past 3.5699… it's chaos. May's point, made with an ecology model, was that wild complexity needs no complicated cause; the simplest feedback suffices.
Referenced by
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theory
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