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Fractals Everywhere, Michael F. Barnsley.

I love the way it starts:

>Fractal geometry will make you see everything differently. There is a danger in reading further. You risk the loss of your childhood vision of clouds, forests, flowers, galaxies, leaves, feathers, rocks, mountains, torrents of water, carpet, bricks, and much else besides. Never again will your interpretation of these things be quite the same.



Not a textbook, but John Gleick's The theory of Chaos is a great read on chaos theory - very approchable!


That was a fun read. But it was written at the height of interest in chaos theory and so some of the curious things it talked about, like the Feigenbaum constants, went nowhere


Did chaos theory as a whole go anywhere? Where is it used, meteorology?


Didn't really go very far. It's a subfield of dynamical systems, and some of its results have been used there. People continue to study it, but it's more in the pure math area, at this point anyway. Recently I heard about some new research into "wild chaos" which sounds interesting.


Interesting! I'll look into that. I'm about 1/3 into The Information, from the same author - also a good read for anyone interested!


You just made a sale of copy. Holy shit that is a cool start!


Is it like Chaos by James Gleick?


not really. this is actually a textbook


marvelous book. prof barnsley is also a wonderful man and teacher




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