Editing State diagram (section)

== Overview ==
State diagrams provide an abstract description of a [[system]]'s [[behavior]]. This behavior is analyzed and represented by a series of events that can occur in one or more possible states. Hereby "each diagram usually represents objects of a single class and track the different states of its objects through the system".<ref>{{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://atlas.kennesaw.edu/~dbraun/csis4650/A&D/UML_tutorial/state.htm |date=* }}</ref>

State diagrams can be used to graphically represent [[finite-state machine]]s (also called finite automata). This was introduced by [[Claude Shannon]] and [[Warren Weaver]] in their 1949 book [[A Mathematical Theory of Communication|''The Mathematical Theory of Communication'']]. Another source is [[Taylor Booth (mathematician)|Taylor Booth]] in his 1967 book ''Sequential Machines and Automata Theory''. Another possible representation is the [[state-transition table]].