this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
0 points (NaN% liked)

Science

13028 readers
74 users here now

Studies, research findings, and interesting tidbits from the ever-expanding scientific world.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


Be sure to also check out these other Fediverse science communities:


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] realChem@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Awh man I need to get myself a new copy of that book! I accidentally left mine on a ferry a few years ago and haven't finished reading it.

Chaos (same author) is also a fantastic read, really got me interested in the field. I ended up taking a dynamical systems class after reading that book, and though we didn't talk much about chaotic systems in particular I could definitely see the similarities!

[–] indigomirage@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I read that one way back when it came out, and it inspired many all night computer sesseon my IBM XT clone hoping my little script would produce a fractal on the screen by morning. He makes the concepts so accessible and inviting. Great writer.

The Information is available as an audiobook too - nice for a long car ride.

[–] realChem@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Definitely a great writer, and sounds like a really interesting project! Did it work?

Audiobook is probably what I'll do in the end. I like a physical copy but it's a bit unrealistic for me to do much sit-down reading these days.

[–] indigomirage@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Yup! In all its monochrome amber screen glory. It was an excuse to learn some coding, and to learn about fractals. I'd do a Mandelbrot set one night, then each night a different Julia set. I'd tweak the iterations and the function logic to see what came out. In the morning, it'd either have worked or not. It the power glitched, it was game over. I wasn't a very sophisticated coder then.

I did a Sierpiński triangle once (I forget the algorithm, but, it had to do with drawing a random point and then another halfway between it and the previous (?) then iterate. I need to look it up - it's been almost 40yrs..!

Actually attempting to code the stuff was absolutely an eye opener and I learned lot.

Audiobooks are awesome. We live in the Golden Age (at least as far as that is concerned...).