black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

One couldn’t even measure roughness. So, by luck, and by reward for persistence, I did found the theory of roughness, which certainly I didn’t expect and expecting to found one would have been pure madness.

Benoit Mandelbrot

Asking the right questions is as important as answering them
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Asking Important Questions Right
I had many books and I had dreams of all kinds. Dreams in which were in a certain sense, how to say, easy to make because the near future was always extremely threatening.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Book Dream Kind
Think not of what you see, but what it took to produce what you see.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Produce See Thinking Took
$Benoit Mandelbrot Quote - Both chaos theory and fractal have had contacts in the past when they are both impossible to develop and in a certain sense not ready to be developed.$

Both chaos theory and fractal have had contacts in the past when they are both impossible to develop and in a certain sense not ready to be developed.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Chaos Impossible Past
If one takes the kinds of risks which I took, which are colossal, but taking risks, I was rewarded by being able to contribute in a very substantial fashion to a variety of fields. I was able to reawaken and solve some very old problems.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Able Colossal Fashion Kind Rewarded Risk
Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Circles Clouds Mountain
In fact, I barely missed being number one in France in both schools. In particular I did very well in mathematical problems.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Country Numbers Problem School
Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dustcloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and irregular and seldom met with, which it always proves more easy to ignore than to attend to.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Facts Observation Order Science
Now that I near 80, I realize with wistful pleasure that on many occasions I was 10, 20, 40, even 50 years ahead of my time.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Pleasure Realizing Years
The techniques I developed for studying turbulence, like weather, also apply to the stock market
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Study Technique Weather
Being a language, mathematics may be used not only to inform but also, among other things, to seduce.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Engineering May Science
$Benoit Mandelbrot Quote - Humanity has known for a long time what fractals are. It is a very strange situation in which an idea which each time I look at all documents have deeper and deeper roots, never (how to say it), jelled.$

Humanity has known for a long time what fractals are. It is a very strange situation in which an idea which each time I look at all documents have deeper and deeper roots, never (how to say it), jelled.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Fractal Humanity Ideas Long Roots
A cloud is made of billows upon billows upon billows that look like clouds. As you come closer to a cloud you don’t get something smooth, but irregularities at a smaller scale.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Clouds Looks Smooth
The Mandelbrot set is the most complex mathematical object known to mankind.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Complexe Mankind Math
If you look at a shape like a straight line, what’s remarkable is that if you look at a straight line from close by, from far away, it is the same; it is a straight line.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Lines Looks Shapes Straight
$Benoit Mandelbrot Quote - When people ask me what’s my field? I say, on one hand, a fractalist. Perhaps the only one, the only full-time one.$

When people ask me what’s my field? I say, on one hand, a fractalist. Perhaps the only one, the only full-time one.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Field Hands People
I had very, very little training in taking an exam to determine a scientist’s life in France.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

France Littles Training
A formula can be very simple, and create a universe of bottomless complexity.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Complexity Formulas Simple
One couldn’t even measure roughness. So, by luck, and by reward for persistence, I did found the theory of roughness, which certainly I didn’t expect and expecting to found one would have been pure madness.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Luck Persistence Reward
The beauty of what I happened by extraordinary chance to put together is that nobody would have believed that this is possible, and certainly I didn’t expect that it was possible. I just moved from step to step to step.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Chance Steps Together
Self-similarity is a dull subject because you are used to very familiar shapes. But that is not the case. Now many shapes which are self-similar again, the same seen from close by and far away, and which are far from being straight or plane or solid.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Case Dull Self Shape Shapes
I didn’t want to become a pure mathematician, as a matter of fact, my uncle was one, so I knew what the pure mathematician was and I did not want to be a pure – I wanted to do something different.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Different Mathematician Uncles Want
Nobody will deny that there is at least some roughness everywhere
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Deny Everywhere Roughness
The straight line has a property of self-similarity. Each piece of the straight line is the same as the whole line when used to a big or small extent.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Lines Pieces Self
There is a saying that every nice piece of work needs the right person in the right place at the right time.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Needs Nice Pieces
There are very complex shapes which would be the same from close by and far away.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Complex Far Away Shapes
The theory of probability is the only mathematical tool available to help map the unknown and the uncontrollable. It is fortunate that this tool, while tricky, is extraordinarily powerful and convenient.
BENOIT MANDELBROT

Powerful Science Tool

One couldn’t even measure roughness. So, by luck, and by reward for persistence, I did found the theory of roughness, which certainly I didn’t expect and expecting to found one would have been pure madness.

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One couldn’t even measure roughness. So, by luck, and by reward for persistence, I did found the theory of roughness, which certainly I didn’t expect and expecting to found one would have been pure madness.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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