Did you know Chaos has a pattern...

From as far as I can recollect, I’ve always wondered about those abnormalities that we take for granted and accept as part of nature or life or so. Almost everyone’s heart gets an abnormal beat once in a while, sometimes it leads to a heart attack, once a month you wake up at four am, the weather changes all of a sudden and you walk right into a shower. You get the drift of what I’m talking about, those inconsequential abnormalities which we treat as normal without batting an eyelid.
Something very interesting happened about 3-4 weeks back, a blogger found a glitch in the calculations of weather and temperature increase that the meteorological bureau had worked out for decades. A measly 0.015 change of temperature, so whats the hoo-haa about one would ask. With the increasing temperature and global warming and all the other signs you keep talking, reading and learning about; you just might have miscalculated when the ice caps will melt. Well I’m being a little extreme here but take two minutes on this thought – would those missed heart beats actually be a pattern that you don’t know about yet? Would those small twitches I get on my back actually be telling me that I might have a slipped disc a couple of years down the line?
In the end it always comes down to numbers and that’s why I’ve always been fascinated with it. For example, take the temperature of everyday day upto 2 decimal points for over a decade, we would tend to think that the average temperature would give us a decent indication. Now calculate the same with decimal point of not 2 but 5 decimal points. You will be startled at the difference in the averages you get. Now when I think of it, I wonder if a decimal point change in the revenue or expenditure of say India budget affect a million people in the country. Doesn’t math and numbers lose its meaning in such cases, where else would such an exact science become a weakness.
Companies and manufacturers in everyday field are trying to move to 6 sigma, nevertheless keep in mind that there are still defects. We can never become perfect but we sure can try our best and this is where the thought comes in. Isnt this the only gap that is there, the errors that we accept as normal. What if I tell you that this abnormality has a pattern, this wayward incident actually has a set pattern of its own. And today governments are spending billions to understand this abnormality that exists in every stream. I guess it’s a big enough thing if this is the case right?
When you get time, have a read at James Glieck’s Chaos, might help understand the enormity of the situation.