Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions(SDIC): “Butterfly Effect”, this is the idea that small changes in initial conditions can lead to vastly different outcomes. In chaotic systems, even a tiny perturbation can grow exponentially over time, making long-term prediction impossible.

Consider the map on unit interval, Fixed point at and . is identical to

This is a period 2 source, because . is eventually periodic to source at 0.

Desmos

All rational numbers will be eventually be periodic to a Repelling fixed point.


Formal Definition of SDIC

Let be a map on . A point has SDIC if such that any neighborhood of contains a point such that:

for some non negative integer . I.e., a point will be sensitive if it has neighbors as close as desired that eventually move away.

In plain English, this means that no matter how close you start to , there are points arbitrarily close that will eventually diverge from by at least a distance after some number of iterations.


Itineraries, list of letters