Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: With Applications To Physics, Biology, Chemistry, And Engineering (Studies in nonlinearity)

Having programs to plot the figures in the book would have helped in understanding the material. If you want Mathematica programs - see Wolframs "The Mathematica Book". For Maple and MATLAB programs, see Lynch's Dynamical Systems books.

Strogatz's Sync book is a marvelous read.


Nice intuitive introduction to chaos and nonlinear phenomena   November 24, 2003
Josh Isralowitz (Rutherford, NJ United States)
15 out of 16 found this review helpful

Basically, if you have a solid foundation in elementary multivariable calculus (calc III) and some aspects of ODEs, and want to know just what's going on with this new 'chaos trend,' and more importantly want to know why 'chaos' is actually useful, then read this book. As one reviewer noted, this book is not mathematically rigorous, and there's a simple reason for this: one can't explain nonlinear phenomena rigorously with just an elementary multivariable calculus backround. To rigorously treat the material in this book, you must have at least some point-set topological backround and have a decently strong real analysis backround (even Strogatz uses concepts from analysis and topology in an elementary way, such as compactness and measure) and even more advanced books that assume such a backround are sometimes less than rigorous (i.e. 'Perko' often says 'it can be shown' rather than showing it himself.) However, the lack of rigor I think is a good thing. Strogatz always nicely indicates 'why something should be true,' which for a beginner will give them a intuition about the subject so that if they gain the backround mentioned above, they can dive farther into this subject by using other advanced books. Finally, this book should be used as a third year undergraduate text. It should not be used as an advanced undergraduate/first year graduate text, since such courses should be more in depth and rigorous.


Following some hard acts   August 23, 2003
R. Bagula (Lakeside, Ca United States)
0 out of 13 found this review helpful

Good problems,
Good equations,
Good diagrams,
Good discussions,
Good coverage,
but following "Chaos and Fractals" is very difficult even for the best writer and scientist. As a text this is one I might choose to use, except for the price. So I give it four stars as people
are still poor when it comes to anything in physics and mathematics.


Simplifing A Complex Field Through A Consistent Approach   June 19, 2003
Kevin M. Ferguson (Portland, OR)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful

Having read the reviews thus far, I can't find anything I disagree with. It's the best technical text I've ever read. Many of the strengths have been mentioned already: intuitive approach, clear and concise, wide range of interesting illustrative examples, etc.

In addition, the consistent use and discussion of trajectories, phase space, stable points, etc. throughout the entire text allows the reader to incrementally build from each previous lesson. Though other books on nonlinear dynamics use these same tools, the vivid explanations and repetitions with incremental differences greatly enhanced the comprehensibility of these topics. I especially appreciate these consistent methods applied to the consolidation of the material in this text after reading books and papers from various authors using different jargon and methods of illustrating the same concepts.