The 0-1 test for chaos is a recently developed time series characterization algorithm that can determine whether a system is chaotic or nonchaotic. While the 0-1 test was designed for deterministic series, in real-world measurement situations, noise levels may not be known and the 0-1 test may have difficulty distinguishing between chaos and randomness. In this paper, we couple the 0-1 test for chaos with a test for determinism and apply these tests to noisy symbolic series generated from various model systems. We find that the pairing of the 0-1 test with a test for determinism improves the ability to correctly distinguish between chaos and randomness from a noisy series. Furthermore, we explore the modes of failure for the 0-1 test and the test for determinism so that we can better understand the effectiveness of the two tests to handle various levels of noise. We find that while the tests can handle low noise and high noise situations, moderate levels of noise can lead to inconclusive results from the two tests.

• Received 7 September 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.83.026201