The view that all systems from natural ecosystems, to stock markets,
traffic jams, the weather etc are complex adaptive systems is gaining
ground. From a mechanistic Netwonian, reductionist view of the
Universe, we have moved to a biological holistic view.

In a charity function lesson to 8th grade school children, I'm trying
to find real examples in nature, science, business, finance etc of
characteristics of complex adaptive systems and whether this has
lessons for them in real life. For example, from looking at complex
systems, we can say that the future is inherently predictable, and
everything we do has a cause, effect, and feedback
Can anybody help? (see below)

1. Complex systems are 'distributed' with no centralised control.
Tasks are carried out in-parallel and not serial.
2. Complex systems are 'holistic'.   2+ 2 is not four. The whole is
greater than the sum of it's parts. Interactions and processes produce
new emergent properties.
3. Complex systems have feedback properties causing small initial
differences to grow exponentially.
4. Complex systems have self-similarity characteristics at different
scales e.g. Fractals
5. Complex systems are always evolving,constuctive destruction.
Equilibrium is 'death'. Long periods of stability followed by short
periods great turbulence and change. Cycles exist but are alway
changing in amplitude and length too.
6. Complex systems have self-organizing properties. From seeming
randomness, a coherent entity evolves.

p.s. I'm only setting a low price because I'm just a poor teacher in
an Asian public school.

Hello,

Thank you for your question. You have a very good understanding of the
principles of chaos theory (very related to complexity theory) it
seems from your introduction. Here are some real life examples of
chaos theory that may be useful for 8th graders to understand or
appreciate.

A washing machine that uses chaos theory to clean things and less
tangled.
http://library.thinkquest.org/3120/realife.html

One that just comes to mind is mixing paint or turbulent flows of
liquids or gases.

A dripping tap (faucet) is also another example of something familar
yet chaotic
http://www.nature.com/nsu/001228/001228-2.html

There is a rather nice online demo of basic chaos theory at
 http://users.ox.ac.uk/~quee0818/chaos/chaos.html

A swinging pendulum also has chaotic behaviours, this is demonstrated
at
http://www.physics.orst.edu/~rubin/rubin/CHAOS/ 

 a pendulum that has an extra arm is also quite effective
demonstration and can be seen at
 http://www.nationalsciencecenter.org/FortDiscovery/Robotics/demos/ChaoticPendulum/ChaoticPendulumApplet.htm

From the book " NewScientists Guide to Chaos" Edited by Nina Hall also
refers to a range of real life examples. These include: Capsizing
Ships in a storm, and even bridges osicllating wildly and eventually
collapsing.

There is also a site devoted to complex systems available at
http://www.complex-systems.com/

At this stage I'll stop here as this gives some good starting points.
If you would like any more examples or suggestions or ideas on how to
present this to your 8th graders please feel free to post a
clarification. I am a science teacher and would be happy to help out.

kind regards

rcd-ga

google search strategy:

"chaos theory" "real life"
mixing fluids chaos theory OR chaotic behaviour
chaotic pendulum

---

Request for Answer Clarification by khean-ga on 24 Nov 2002 23:23 PST

Actually, I am not teaching Science but General Knowledge to a bunch
of gifted children .I'm afraid the answers are inadequate. Chaos
Theory is only a subset of Complexity Theory. It dwells mainly on
characteristics nos: 3 and 4 of my list. Actually the other rules are
more interesting and applicable to life in general. I would like to
know more examples from the non-science world. For example, the
property of positive feedback (self-reinforcement) can explain why the
rich get richer or why big corporations get bigger and the advantage
of size. The property about 'distributiveness' and non-central control
helps explain why capitalist economies with each one doing his own
thing to earn a living, are better than centralised economies like the
previous communist system. Complex systems also teach us that life is
not  predestined etc, change is constant and sometimes catastrophic,
and all things depend on and affect each other. I would like to hear
from others : examples from stock-markets, trafic jam,business
ecosystems and competition, ant-colonies, networks. Especially more
about emergent properties, cycles and self-organization

---

Clarification of Answer by rcd-ga on 25 Nov 2002 01:14 PST

Thank you for your clarification request. I shall endeavor to research
more specifically about stock-markets, trafic jams and other emergent
properties you mentioned. It may be possible that computer simulations
of artificial life may demonstrate these features.

Please stay tuned hopefully within the next 15 hours I should have
more examples and references for you.

regards rcd-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by rcd-ga on 25 Nov 2002 14:54 PST

Hello khean,


Here are some examples of emergent properties. Ant colonies for
example are described in this article:
http://www.ackley.com/social_systems/21_ant_colonies.htm

The stock market emergent properties are described in a rather complex
way here as
http://ideas.repec.org/p/sce/scecf0/328.html

A quite enlightening article about emergence from David J. Chalmers at
Indiana State Uni highlights issues on a more philosophical level and
can be found at
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/notes/emergence.html

A rather nicely presented discussion of issues of complexity,
emergence, chaos theory, cellular automata and evolutionary computing
can be found here at
http://www.webslave.dircon.co.uk/alife/complexity.html 

There is an excellent looking FAQ(frequently asked question) on usenet
that discusses self-organizing systems located at
http://www.calresco.org/sos/sosfaq.htm

There was also a classic experiment on how a pile of sand can be
self-organising , This was done by Bak et al using a computer model. A
discussion of this work can be found at
http://algodones.unm.edu/~bmilne/bio576/instr/html/SOS/sos.html#ch4
This also discusses the issues as they relate to rainforest dynamics
and ant colonies.

There are some online examples of neural networks and so-called
self-organising maps that may be of interest. They are certainly quite
interesting visually. These are available at
http://www.aist.go.jp/NIBH/~b0616/Lab/Links.html

From my experience in teaching trying to have a demonstration of these
things would help also, something simple like a large number of small
balls could be used to simulate the pile of sand experiment. Although
I have not taught a gifted class I would suspect that doing some sort
of numerical analysis might be fun. eg the critical number of balls
needed for a break down of a pile.

Another little idea would be to construct a simple chaotic magnetic
pendulum
This certainly shows how unprediticable events can be in real  life. a
nice website that shows this set up is at Carnegie Mellon at
 http://bednorzmuller87.phys.cmu.edu/demonstrations/oscillationsandwaves/drivenoscillations/demo226.html

For your class you could suggest that the magnets represent different
pressures/choices they may face in their lives and how they compete
for their attention and it is still hard to predict which way they end
up going.


A really fun animation that shows evolution ( an example of behaviours
that emerge from artifical evolution on a computer, 8th graders would
enjoy this I'm sure is
http://alife.ccp14.ac.uk/ftp-mirror/alife/zooland/pub/research/ci/Alife/karl-sims/creatures-demo.mpg
 This quite a large file about 9Mb. 

You may also find some rather intersting examples of evolution and
emergent behaviours at http://biota.org/ksims/

Some biological ecological discussion of complexity issues can be
found at the Australian National University on
http://www.csu.edu.au/people/dgg/esa93.html

There is a very comprehensive listing and catalogue of Complexity
theory is available at http://www.calresco.org/applicat.htm. Just
scroll down this page and check the heading of Economics, Business &
Management Resources for more links

An example at this site there is a link to a theory called bionomics
and sort of economic model that relates to complexity theory from a
sort of ecology model view. Their website is http://www.bionomics.org/

I hope these links can give you more ideas for your class. If you have
any more specific questions, please feel free to post them as a
clarification. Please feel free also to use my search strategy in case
I may have missed something.

Also thank you to pdavis42 for his comment, that is a really nice
recommendation.

search strategy

emergent properties ant colonies
emergent properties artificial life
emergent properties self-organizing
self-organizing neural networks
chaotic magnetic pendulum
artificial life
bushfire chaos evolution
"complexity theory" economics

O.K. Thanks. Now I have quite a lot of material to read up on. Thanks
for your help rcd-ga. Also thanks to those who joined in the Comments.
I hope for some more comments too.

For "real-life" examples that children understand how about looking at
story lines in soap operas. I doubt whether script writers are
knowledgeable in the theories but many stories are generated from a
small beginning and grow in unpredictable ways - a simple white lie
ending in a death, for example.

I was taught chaos theory from pure mathematical point of view but
remember the analogy of hate turning to love in films and TV programs
when two characters interact.

This may be completely off the mark for your lecture but some would
consider it more "real life" and relevant than examples such as
capitalism/communism.

Search terms "chaos theory" "soap opera" gave:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~vtr1000/phd/politic.pdf
http://www2.abc.net.au/science/descent/posts/topic1521.shtm

You may be interested in the book "Turtles, Termites, and Traffic
Jams" by Mitchel Resnick.  In it, he discusses how complex systems can
come about through the interaction of autonomous agents following
simple rules.  It's written for a general audience, and may be
especially good for introducing these concepts to younger students.

http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=5368

If you have access to a computer, you can even download StarLogo (a
parallelized version of the popular language LOGO) and teach your
students programming as they create their own decentralized systems. 
It's a lot of fun, and should be a perfect project for eighth graders.

http://education.mit.edu/starlogo/

I hope that this helps your students.  If you have a good experience
with it,
I would recommend that you contact Professor Resnick -- he's always
interested in educational uses of his ideas and programs.