Perhaps the most famous equation in science is E = mc2; it also represents one of the best-known scientific insights. But why does Einstein’s equation about the conservation of energy enjoy such popularity? Is it because it is easily and instinctively understood, or because it is widely taught in schools? I doubt that either explanation is true; rather, its appeal is its elegant simplicity with...

'Ihe computing world is undergoing a transformation from centralized to distributed computer systems. At the same time, software maintenance has been identified repeatedly as the largest single system life cycle cost. This paper focuses on the issue of whether and to what extent distributed computer operating environments directly afrect software maintenance difficulty (and, by association, sof...

We introduce complexity parameters for time series based on comparison of neighboring values. The definition directly applies to arbitrary real-world data. For some well-known chaotic dynamical systems it is shown that our complexity behaves similar to Lyapunov exponents, and is particularly useful in the presence of dynamical or observational noise. The advantages of our method are its simplic...

In recounting the e6pietls-reas-ens---ereK-£-HSC-S f-Gfour tr-a-ditional problems in developing and maintaining computer software, many authorities have mentioned complexity (e.g., References 2, 8, 15). The complexity pointed to sometimes is the inherent complexity of the jobs the computer is to do; sometimes it is the complexity of the systems or programs that direct the computer to do the job...

When participants are asked to spontaneously categorize a set of items, they typically produce unidimensional classifications, i.e., categorize the items on the basis of only one of their dimensions of variation. We examine whether it is possible to predict unidimensional vs. two-dimensional classification on the basis of the abstract stimulus structure, by employing Pothos and Chater's simplic...

We study the predictability of emergent phenomena in complex systems. Using nearest-neighbor, one-dimensional cellular automata (CA) as an example, we show how to construct local coarse-grained descriptions of CA in all classes of Wolfram's classification. The resulting coarse-grained CA that we construct are capable of emulating the large-scale behavior of the original systems without accounti...