ALAN
(re: blackboard)
'Fuzzy C-Means Cluster Analysis.'
Hard to believe there was a time when
I considered myself math literate...
ALAN
(re: blackboard)
'Fuzzy C-Means Cluster Analysis.'
Hard to believe there was a time when
I considered myself math literate...
CHARLIE
The process can get complex, but the
concept is fairly simple -- David and
Blakely are throwing off two
coinciding heat signatures...
ENTER AUDIENCE VISION --
Of a SCHOOL OF FISH -- think coral reef, colorful,
beautiful...
CHARLIE (V.O.) (cont'd)
... like two schools of fish, passing
through each other... looking to the
naked eye like a single group...
... a SECOND SCHOOL OF FISH swimming into the first... it
becomes a writhing mass of color and motion... data on each
fish flying away from them...
CHARLIE (V.O.) (cont'd)
... but if you analyze the data
discretely -- check the movement and
behavior of the individual fish --
... the math separating the TWO SCHOOLS to opposite sides of
the screen...
CHARLIE (V.O.) (cont'd)
-- you can separate the two
groupings.
Imagine two schools of fish passing through each other, looking to the naked eye like a single group.
ENTER AUDIENCE VISION --
Of FIREFLIES in the night...
CHARLIE (V.O.) (cont'd)
-- much like fireflies, flickering
off and on during a summer night;
apparently random blinks of light in
the darkness ...
... MATH following their trails backward --
CHARLIE (V.O.) (cont'd)
... but math reveals their path and
purpose, tells us which trees they've
laid eggs beneath, where they've gone
to mate; bringing rhythm and pattern
to the light show.
Using techniques of swarm modeling, it is possible to make a somewhat unrealistic model of firefly behavior.
CHARLIE
Chaos Theory holds that outcome is
sensitive to initial conditions. We
must restore the decision making
process to the man who started it.
A classic result in
chaos theory is that small
perturbations in "chaotic" iterated maps grow roughly
exponentially.
