The method of global flow reconstruction uses a single observed signal {s i } to infer properties of the dynamical system that generated it. First N-dimensional 'vectors' S i = s i , s i − − 1 , s i − − 2 , . . . s i − − N + 1 are constructed. The next step consists in finding an expression for the nonlinear evolution operator M that takes the system from time i to time i + 1 , i.e., S i + 1 = M ( S i ) . Takens' theorem guarantees that under very general circumstances the topological properties of this reconstructed evolution operator are the same as that of the physical system, provided the embedding dimension N is large enough. Thus from the knowledge of a single observed variable one can infer properties about the real physical system which is governed by a number of independent variables.