System analysis via performance maps

While there are a number of visual methods common to the design and analysis of dynamic systems, they tend to be specific to their application and limited in the amount of information that they yield. This paper explores a visualization technique, titled the performance map, which is derived from the Julia set commonly used in the visualization of iterative chaos. Performance maps are generated via digital computation, and require a minimum of a priori knowledge of the system under evaluation. By the use of color-coding, these images convey a wealth of information to the informed user about dynamic behaviors of a system that may be hidden from all but the expert analyst.