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Books : reviews

Julien Clinton Sprott.
Numerical Recipes: routines and examples in Basic.
CUP. 1991

Modern BASIC programmers will be delighted to learn that the routines and demonstration programs from the highly acclaimed reference book Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing are now available in their language of choice. Numerical Recipes, by William H. Press, Brian P. Flannery, Saul A. Teukolsky and William T. Vetterling, is a complete handbook containing nearly 200 algorithms or “recipes” for scientific computing and numerical analysis. It is accompanied by the Numerical Recipes Example Book containing programs that demonstrate the subroutines. Julien C. Sprott has translated all of the recipes and programs, over 350 in all, into BASIC. This book brings the routines and programs together in a single source that includes computer code and code captions from both the book and example book and the commentary from the example book. It is recommended for use with one of the main Numerical Recipes books.

The author employs Microsoft QuickBasic 4.5, but the recipes are easily adapted for other modern forms of BASIC. The programs contained in this book are also available as machine-readable code on a 5¼-inch floppy diskette for IBM compatible computers.

Julien Clinton Sprott.
Chaos and Time-Series Analysis.
OUP. 2003

This text provides an introduction to the exciting new developments in chaos and related topics in nonlinear dynamics, including the detection and quantification of chaos in experimental data, fractals, and complex systems. Most of the important elementary concepts in nonlinear dynamics are discussed, with emphasis on the physical concepts and useful results rather than mathematical proofs and derivations. While many books on chaos are purely qualitative and many others are highly mathematical, this book fills the middle ground by giving the essential equations, but in the simplest possible form. It assumes only an elementary knowledge of calculus. Complex numbers, differential equations, and vector calculus are used in places, but those tools are described as required. The book is aimed at the student, scientist, or engineer who wants to learn how to use the ideas in a practical setting. It is written at a level suitable for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students in all fields of science and engineering.

Julien Clinton Sprott.
Elegant Chaos: algebraically simple chaotic flows.
World Scientific. 2010

This heavily illustrated book collects in one source most of the mathematically simple systems of differential equations whose solutions are chaotic. It includes the historically important systems of van der Pol, Duffing, Ueda, Lorenz, Rössler, and many others, but it goes on to show that there are many other systems that are simpler and more elegant. Many of these systems have been only recently discovered and are not widely known. Most cases include plots of the attractor and calculations of the spectra of Lyapunov exponents. Some important cases include graphs showing the route to chaos. The book includes many cases not previously published as well as examples of simple electronic circuits that exhibit chaos.

No existing book thus far focuses on mathematically elegant chaotic systems. This book should therefore be of interest to chaos researchers looking for simple systems to use in their studies, to instructors who want examples to teach and motivate students, and to students doing independent study.