The chaotic rhythm of life

Explore the May-Oster-Yorke law

This GUI contemplates how mysterious-looking situations can sometimes be
explained with simple mathematical rules. It gives a clear and understandable
description of the behavior arising from a logistic equation that expresses
the population of a system of animals as Nnew = Lambda*Nold (1 - Nold).
Varying the parameter Lambda can give several different outcomes,
including extinction, stable growth to a limiting population, cyclical
oscillation of population sizes, and even chaotic variation. This
example, originating in work of May, Oster, and Yorke, was one of the
early manifestations of chaos theory. More information can be found:
abel.harvard.edu/archive/118r_spring_05/docs/may.pdf
...And it means that sometimes a whole population of frogs, or worms,
or people, can die for no reason whatsoever, just because that is the way
the numbers work...

Created by Giuseppe Cardillo
[e-mail]

To cite this file, this would be an appropriate format:
Cardillo G. (2008) The chaotic rhythm of life: explore the
May-Oster-Yorke law.
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/18915