Introduction:

Cartwright is a woman of many firsts, from scholarly achievements to career achievements. She stood out from her peers because of how brilliant she was.

Born: 1900   Died: 1998

Cartwright was a British mathematician who devoted her life to her education and studies in mathematics. She also lectured and passed her knowledge on to students throughout her later years in life.

Major Accomplishments:

  • One of five women to enroll in her college the year she did.
  • Rewarded first in class and graduated in 1923.
  • Became director of studies in mathematics at Girton College.
  • First woman to receive the Sylvester Medal and first to serve on the Council of the Royal Society.
  • President of the London Mathematical Society, first and still last as of now.

Chaos Theory:

“Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary theory stating that, within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnectedness, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization.”

Butterfly Effect:

“The butterfly effect, an underlying principle of chaos, describes how a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state (meaning that there is sensitive dependence on initial conditions).”

Conclusions:

Freeman Dyson, theoretical physicist and mathematician, attended one of Cartwright’s lectures in 1942 and recalls, “being delighted with the beauty of her results,” but not being able to see the importance of them. Chaos Theory and the work that Cartwright did was overlooked for many years before it gained the recognition it deserved for its complexity.

Markets are complex and chaotic systems, and their behavior has both systemic and random components. Chaos theory can be applied to observe such complex and chaotic  systems to find the underlying patterns in one’s market. “Using chaos theory, a change in price is determined through mathematical predictions of the following factors: a trader’s personal motivations changes (complex) in volume, the acceleration of changes, and momentum behind the changes.”

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