Dynamical Systems Seminar: Ryan James, Research Associate

Chaos Forgets and Remembers: Measuring Information Creation, Destruction, and Storage  

Ryan James, Research Associate

Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder

Date and time: 

Thursday, October 3, 2013 - 2:00pm

Location: 

ECCR 257

Abstract: 

The hallmark of deterministic chaos is that it creates information—the rate being given by the Kolmogorov-Sinai metric entropy. Since its introduction half a century ago, the metric entropy has been used as a unitary quantity to measure a system’s intrinsic unpredictability. Here, we show that it naturally decomposes into two structurally meaningful components: A portion of the created information — the ephemeral information — is forgotten and a portion — the bound information — is remembered. The bound information is a new kind of intrinsic computation that differs fundamentally from information creation: it measures the rate of active information storage. We show that it can be directly and accurately calculated via symbolic dynamics, revealing a hitherto unknown richness in how dynamical systems compute.