In simple terms, the measure of the level of disorder in aclosed but changing system, a system in which energy can

only be transferred in one direction from an ordered state to a disordered state. Higher the entropy, higher the disorder and lower the availability of the system's energy to do useful work. Although the concept of entropy originated in thermodynamics (as the 2nd law) and statisticalmechanics, it has found applications myriad of subjectssuch as communications, economics, information scienceand technology, linguistics, music. In day-to-day life itmanifests in the state of chaos in a household or officewhen effort is not made to keep things in order.

Apparently random and unpredictable phenomenon, or thebehavior of a complex system, where tiny changes in the starting conditions can lead to very large changes over time. Although in common usage chaos means utter confusion and disorganization, in mathematics it signifies that the equations expressing nonlinear systems are extremely sensitive to initial inputs. And that, while suchsystems normally show some regularity, it is impossible to predict their future behavior with a high degree of certainty. The term was introduced by the US mathematicians Tienlien Li and James A. Yorke in their 1975 paper 'Period 3 Implies Chaos' which dealt with logistic (differential)functions. The authors, however, did not define 'chaos' and despite its popularity this term (like 'system') remains without a widelyaccepted definition. See also chaotic system.

Complex system that shows sensitivity to initial conditions, such as an economy, a stockmarket, or weather. In such systems any uncertainty (no matter how small) in the beginning will produce rapidly escalating and compoundingerrors in the prediction of the system's future behavior. Tomake an accurate prediction of longterm behavior of such systems, the initial conditions must be known in their entirety and to an infinite level of accuracy. In other words, it is impossible to predict the future behavior of anycomplex (chaotic) system.