摘要:In ‘dissipative’ dynamical systems, variables evolve asymptotically toward low dimensional ‘attractors’ that define their dynamical properties. Unfortunately, real ‐ world dynamical systems are generally too complex for us to directly observe these attractors. Fortunately, there is a method—‘phase space reconstruction’—that can be used to indirectly detect attractors in real ‐ world dynamical systems using time series data on a single variable (Broomhead and King, 1985; Schaffer and Kott, 1985; Kott et al, 1988; Williams,1997). Armed with this knowledge, we can formulate more accurate and informative models of real ‐ world dynamical systems.