One of the most famous math pieces in the world, the Mandelbrot set, but what is it? First, fractals. "They are tricky to define," says Michael Rose, PhD candidate at the University of Newcastle's School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. "Infinite intricacy, zoom symmetry, complexity from simplicity, and fractional dimensions." Benoit Mandelbrot was born in Warsaw in 1924 and he could see that fractals are the geometry of nature. He was working as a coder for IBM in the 70's when he came across a paper by Gaston Julia. The Julia set, defined loosely, is "the set of points where, no matter how many times you repeatedly apply some function to them, they will never shoot off into infinity." With the aid of computer graphics, Mandelbrot was able to connect the function: fc(z)=z2 + c More Here if you can understand the math. I just like the visuals. :-P
