Publisher's Synopsis
Complex systems can be understood with a reasonable amount of effort. This book is an attempt to make complex systems accessible to senior undergraduates, postgraduate students and research workers. Seven chapters introduce examples from physics, chemistry and engineering. The first chapter provides the connecting thread layout the terminology and provides some basic backgrounds. Each chapter is partly pedagogic and partly written with researchers in mind. The senior undergraduate will be able to use the book as a text while researchers should find it an up-to-date source material as well as throught-provoking. The presentation of such apparently diverse topics in the aforesaid manner is a pioneering activity. The book will cover the broad areas of macroscopic systems which exhibit complex behaviour. Mathematical techniques are clearly spelt out. Specialized topics include hydrodynamic instabilities, mechanical vibration, chemical chaos, softmatter physics, speech signal analysis, neural metworks, Monte Carlo methods, etc.;Scientists and engineers alike should find it useful in their research and in planning teaching programmes for the future.
