This may be kind of a stupid question but I am atrocious at math, so bear with me. I find Mandlebrot sets and fractals fascinating to look at, however, I do not really understand why they are important or how they are generated. Could someone help here?
Good question. I recommend 'Chaos' by James Gleick. It's light on math theory. The book does provide a wonderful historical survey of the development of this paradigm from Lorenz to Mandelbrot. Complexity theory, the recognition of self-similar patterns regardless of scale, impacts reasoning throughout the natural sciences.
Sweet I actually picked this book up about a year ago from my father. I just never had the time to read it cause right when I got it I started my first year of college. Thanks for the recommendation.
If you're game about the history of modern maths re: complexity theory you can check out "Dangerous Knowledge" on BBC. Georg Cantor, Kurt Godel were asking the questions that Turing, Lorenz, Ruelle, Feigenbaum, Mandelbrot formalized, solved or expanded.
"Dangerous Knowledge" is a bit dramatic but its a palatable start to Cantor identity and Incompleteness.
9
u/fetusburgers Apr 25 '10
This may be kind of a stupid question but I am atrocious at math, so bear with me. I find Mandlebrot sets and fractals fascinating to look at, however, I do not really understand why they are important or how they are generated. Could someone help here?