chaos : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

English Dictionary: chaos	by the DICT Development Group
3 results for chaos
From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
chaos n a state of extreme confusion and disorder [syn: chaos, pandemonium, bedlam, topsy-turvydom, topsy- turvyness] the formless and disordered state of matter before the creation of the cosmos (Greek mythology) the most ancient of gods; the personification of the infinity of space preceding creation of the universe (physics) a dynamical system that is extremely sensitive to its initial conditions
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Chaos \Cha"os\ (k[amac]"[ocr]s), n. [L. chaos chaos (in senses 1 & 2), Gr. cha`os, fr. cha`inein (root cha) to yawn, to gape, to open widely. Cf. {Chasm}.] 1. An empty, immeasurable space; a yawning chasm. [Archaic] Between us and there is fixed a great chaos. --Luke xvi. 26 (Rhemish Trans.). 2. The confused, unorganized condition or mass of matter before the creation of distinct and orderly forms. 3. Any confused or disordered collection or state of things; a confused mixture; confusion; disorder.
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (15Feb98) [foldoc]:
chaos A property of some non-linear dynamic systems which exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions. This means that there are initial states which evolve within some finite time to states whose separation in one or more dimensions of state space depends, in an average sense, exponentially on their initial separation. Such systems may still be completely {deterministic} in that any future state of the system depends only on the initial conditions and the equations describing the change of the system with time. It may, however, require arbitrarily high precision to actually calculate a future state to within some finite precision. ["On defining chaos", R. Glynn Holt and D. Lynn Holt . {(ftp://mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/etext/ippe/preprints/Phil_of_Science/Holt_and_Holt.On_Defining_Chaos)}] Fixed precision {floating-point} arithmetic, as used by most computers, may actually introduce chaotic dependence on initial conditions due to the accumulation of rounding errors (which constitutes a non-linear system). (1995-02-07)