What concept illustrates how a minor change can lead to significant effects in a chaotic system?

The concept that best illustrates how a minor change can lead to significant effects in a chaotic system is deterministically chaotic systems. Deterministic chaos refers to systems that, while governed by deterministic laws, exhibit unpredictable behavior due to their sensitivity to initial conditions. This means that even a tiny change in the starting point of the system can result in vastly different outcomes, which is often illustrated through the metaphor of the "butterfly effect."

The idea behind deterministic chaos contrasts with linear systems, where changes are directly proportional and predictable. In chaotic systems, the relationships aren't straightforward, and the complexity leads to emergent behaviors that cannot be anticipated based solely on the system's initial state. Thus, it is this sensitivity to initial conditions embedded in deterministic chaos that captures the essence of how small variations can produce dramatic results down the line.

On the other hand, reiterative feedback loops, randomness, and linearity don't adequately convey the same degree of sensitivity and unpredictability associated with chaotic systems. Reiterative feedback loops can lead to predictable cycles rather than chaotic outcomes, randomness lacks the underlying deterministic structure, and linearity implies a direct and predictable correlation between changes, which does not apply to chaotic systems.