How Mandelbrot’s Fractals Changed the World

APA Citation:

Challoner, J. (2010, October 18). How Mandelbrot’s fractals changed the world. Retrieved July 4, 2019, from https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-11564766

Summary:  

The term fractal was coined in 1975 by a Polish-born mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot.  Fractal geometry is complex and beautiful – to get an idea of what a fractal is, look at nature.  Fractals are found in clouds, mountains, coastlines, among a multitude of other places. Examining a fractal, one can find the same shape, but smaller, repeated again and again.  A pine tree and notice that it is composed of branches, and each branch is composed of smaller branches, and so on.

The patterns in fractals are not regular (Circles, cones, spheres, etc.) but reflect the irregularity found in the world – “Mandelrot referred to it as ‘roughness’”.  These patterns are used to describe the world and useful when looking into medicine, engineering, genetics, art, as well as computers and describing financial markets.

Things Learned:

Fractals are artistically pleasing, and interesting to look at the world with; I was intrigued to learn that they can be applied to describe financial markets.

My Question:

This answers my question about mathematical thinking as fractals are exploring the patterns and finding the logic in what seems to be chaos.