The mathematician in Jurassic Park was wrong. From what he was told, he should have concluded that the outside world was safe from the new dinosaurs. Having a monopoly on one of their necessary nutrients is a rather reliable confinement mechanism. Unfortunately, he was told wrong. The necessary nutrient was available elsewhere. My recollection is that it was in chickens. And, yeah, his communication skills were rather awful. His only intelligible explanation for his conclusion was something like "Life will find a way."

I do not completely agree with your review. The allusion to Chaos theory and the fractal curves shown at the beginning of each chapter are just that: fashionable allusions.

But there is a very meaningful piece of math in the book, which is an important part of the plot (of course disappeared in the movie):

At some moment, we are shown the curve of the weights of some animals (around page 170-180) of the pocket edition); the man in charge of the park explains it is a normal curve, and the mathematician says that it is a problem; he elaborates 40 pages later, by explaining that it would be impossible to find such a normal curve for an artificial population as this one. This is the first moment where we begin to understand that things are going very wrong, and it is a turning point in the book.

Although the terminology is a bit fuzzy (Poisson normal distribution), I find that the reasoning is sound, and a good elementary application of mathematical modeling to discuss the properties of an ecological system; I often use it in a probability course as example.

Hm. There is actually some math in this book? Are you kidding me? Vau. That is something new. OK. A new task for me: Read the Jurassic park again and look for mathematics. Thanks for putting that on the web!

I agree the Poisson Normal curve part was well done and integral part of the book. I also enjoyed the fractals at the beginning of the chapter. They were a gimic that had little to do with the plot. But it was a neat way of introducing a lot of people to the concept of a fractal. Fractals are related to chaos theory and the butterfly effect which was the theory studied by this mathematician. I think the only chaos in the story was the idea of the mounting issue of glitches in the entirely computerized gamepark rather than in the behavior of the dinosaurs. I do not remember "life will find a way" being in the book, just the movie. The movie is best for its genetics, forget the math, but it has awe inspiring CGI.

I just thought I would say that his book is NOTHING like the movie, so do not base your judgment of the book on the mathematics in the movie. Michael Crichton is an excellent author and I would greatly recommend his works.