MATH 320 - Chaos and Fractals

3 cr.

Study of chaotic dynamical systems and fractal geometry.  Topics from discrete dynamical systems theory include iteration, orbits, graphical analysis, fixed and periodic points, bifurcations, symbolic dynamics, Sarkovskii’s theorem, the Schwarzian derivative, and Newton’s method. Topics from fractal geometry include fractal, Hausdorff, and topological dimension, L-systems, Julia and Mandelbrot sets, iterated function systems, the collage theorem, and strange attractors.