ECON 319 Study Guide - Natural Resource Management, Ecosystem Services, Robustness
Document Summary
It"s because long ago they came to accept the imperfections in their knowledge. >for centuries, meteorologists relied on statistical tables based on historical averages. >pierre-simon laplace postulated that the movement of every particle in the universe should be predictable as long as meteorologists could know the position of all those particles and how fast they are moving. >the most intuitive way to simplify the problem was to break the atmosphere down into a finite series of boxes, or what meteorologists variously refer to as a matrix, a lattice or a grid. >the reason that we view coin flips as unpredictable is because when we toss them, we"re never able to reproduce the exact same motion. > chaos theory, ""predictability: does the flap of a butterfly"s wings in brazil set off a tornado in texas?"" In other words, a small change in initial conditions can produce a large and unexpected divergence in outcomes.
