Talk:Fractal

Missing image Cscr-featured.png Featured article star

Fractal is a featured article, which means it has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. If you see a way this page can be updated or improved without compromising previous work, feel free to contribute.

Template:Talk Spoken Wikipedia

Hello guys! I made some fractal images for the swedish page: Sv:Fraktal, copy them to here if you like, Sv:User:Solkoll --80.217.177.185 20:11, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

/Archive1

Contents

1 Broccoli Image 2 {{attention}} 3 How Long is the Coast of Britain? 4 Proposal to remove {{attention}} tag 5 Further Reading 6 discrete mathematics 7 First sentence, self-similarity

Broccoli Image

I think the broccoli image was a most excellent example of fractal-ness in real life. It was removed on 16:06, 3 Apr 2005 by User:Brian0918 without a hint in his edit message ("converted pics to gallery...") that he removed it. I vote for putting the image back into the article. -- Yogi de 20:09, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

{{attention}}

I see you have listed the featured article fractal on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention with the note "poorly organized; some parts may be expressed better". Can you be more explicit about what further work you think needs to be done on the article ? How can its organisation be improved ? Which parts can be expressed better ? Perhaps if you create a list of specific issues on the article's talk page, then we can try to reach a concensus on the way forward. Gandalf61 15:50, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Really, that's a featured article? That's interesting. It just... doesn't seem to flow very well. The language is a bit odd in places; for example, the intro contains the terrible definition A fractal is a geometric object which is "broken up" in a radical way, which is literal but not accurate (does that definition fit broccoli?); also calculus is said to "zoom in" on "objects" to "gain control of them" (how is anyone supposed to understand that?).

It (zooming) is a metaphor being used in an introduction. People are forever being told about zooming in on Mandelbrot sets. The coastline example argues in terms of zooming by change of scale. It's journalistic but I imagine most readers can cope. As for broken up - that is quite accurate and to the point. It's the broccoli that might be criticised. Charles Matthews 17:42, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

But the article doesn't say zooms in on fractal drawings, it says traditional calculus zooms in... which is nonsense.

No. Charles Matthews

Huh? Try adding that statement to the calculus article. --[[User:Eequor|ηυωρ (https://academickids.com:443/encyclopedia/index.php/User_talk:Eequor)]] 19:38, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It would be a perfectly good approach to calculus, given modern computer graphics, to zoom in on small areas of a graph. In calculus you would see a line, or at worst a corner. That would be the point: after a while it doesn't change when you magnify. Calculus is still taught to serve the needs of mathematical physics of the nineteenth century; so much the worse for it. By the way, please stop it with the page name changes without consultation; whatever the agenda is, it is not appreciated. Charles Matthews 20:15, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It may be a workable approach, but it's a terrible definition. Properly speaking, calculus has already "zoomed in" to the infinitesimal level before anyone examines for themselves. It's meaningless to talk of "zooming" once one understands the underlying principles.

The "agenda" is neutral point of view, a little-known part of Wikipedia policy. --[[User:Eequor|ηυωρ (https://academickids.com:443/encyclopedia/index.php/User_talk:Eequor)]] 21:08, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

NPOV doesn't apply in that way to article titles - that's not an argument. Apply it all you like to the article text. It's a poor reason to start changing things, without discussion, and without authoritative support. Charles Matthews 21:58, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Regarding broken up: who would consider the image at right to be "broken up"?

Broccoli certainly exhibits fractal properties; if we are to say that it is impossible for physical objects to be fractals, we would have to throw out most of the article (Britain's coastline, mentions of trees or ferns, and all the images). The difference between mathematical and physical fractals is only a matter of semantics. --[[User:Eequor|ηυωρ (https://academickids.com:443/encyclopedia/index.php/User_talk:Eequor)]] 17:54, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

No it isn't. Charles Matthews

The order of the sections is jarring; I suspect the anecdote about Britain's coastline could be more clearly connected to the rest of the article. It isn't immediately obvious what the infinite shore has to do with any of the other images on the page aside from the Koch snowflake, and there's hardly any mention of that topic either. Both are related to the Hausdorff dimension in a very specific way, but the article doesn't even touch on their relation. Which is quite unfortunate, because the reader can't find out more at Hausdorff dimension — that article is an abstract lump of ugly math.

The Categories and Definitions sections are disorderly, and the latter is mostly redundant. A proper definition should be given in the lead section; the extra details can probably be merged into the rest of the article. As it is, it's vaguely like finding Mandelbrot's lecture notes in the middle of his book.

Also note that the Definitions section introduces the (supposedly) correct definition and then dismisses it offhand as being too difficult. Surely some difficulty is to be expected when discussing non-Euclidean geometric objects which have a noteworthy Hausdorff dimension. --[[User:Eequor|ηυωρ (https://academickids.com:443/encyclopedia/index.php/User_talk:Eequor)]] 17:02, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Would you mind if I copied your comments above to Talk:Fractal ? Both the Introduction and the Definitions sections have been discussed at length there. Their current state is a compromise between two points of view, which could be characterised as the mathematically rigorous view and the understandable to the general reader view. Like all compromises, it is not ideal. Anyway, I think it would be good to see your comments on the talk page. Gandalf61 17:37, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

How Long is the Coast of Britain?

I think most of this section should be moved out. It currently breaks the page up in an odd way. Charles Matthews 10:19, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I have often this article is not the right place for the Coast of Britain section. Since the section is mostly a description of Richardson's research on the measured lengths of coastlines and borders, I have moved this material to Lewis Fry Richardson. Gandalf61 11:29, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

Proposal to remove {{attention}} tag

How would people feel if the {{attention}} tag was now removed from this page ? I think most of the points raised by Eequor when he tagged it in November have been addressed. Gandalf61 14:39, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)

I just recently read the article for the first time, and I think flows very nicely now, imho. --MPerel 03:01, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

I see that Stirling Newberry has now removed the {{attention}} tag, so I have also taken fractal off the list at Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Mathematics. Gandalf61 10:32, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

Further Reading

I changed the bibliographic sources to standard MLA format which can be autogenerated at this site: http://www.easybib.com/ --MPerel 03:03, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

discrete mathematics

The iterative calculative nature of the Mandelbrot set needs to be mentioned to reflect the mathematical relevance of having it there.

If I got it wrong, correct it please.  ;) -- Zalasur 04:48, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Hm I added this comment to the wrong page; please ignore. -- Zalasur 13:48, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

First sentence, self-similarity

Sorry, that's just wrong - self-similarity is not the defining property of a fractal.

Charles Matthews 14:10, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

So the intro was changed 17 December by User:EastNile, who hasn't edited since. I think we needn't take that as authoritative on fractals. The first para certainly needs to go back to something more like it was before. That's because fractal does now have some strong connotations, but a rather particular actual denotation. (I hope that clarifies a bit what the issue is here: it is not as if self-similarity is irrelevant.)

Charles Matthews 14:22, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)