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 MANDELBROTFor much of my life there was no place where the things I wanted to investigate were of interest to anyone.
More Benoit Mandelbrot Quotes
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Some mathematicians didn’t even perceive of the possibility of a picture being helpful. To the contrary, I went into an orgy of looking at pictures by the hundreds; the machines became a little bit better.
BENOIT MANDELBROT -
Bottomless wonders spring from simple rules, which are repeated without end.
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I spent half my life, roughly speaking, doing the study of nature in many aspects and half of my life studying completely artificial shapes. And the two are extraordinarily close; in one way both are fractal.
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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.
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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.
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The theory of chaos and theory of fractals are separate, but have very strong intersections. That is one part of chaos theory is geometrically expressed by fractal shapes.
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Why is geometry often described as cold and dry? One reason lies in its inability to describe the shape of a cloud, a mountain, a coastline or a tree.
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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.
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Being a language, mathematics may be used not only to inform but also, among other things, to seduce.
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Order doesn’t come by itself.
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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 -
Asking the right questions is as important as answering them
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For much of my life there was no place where the things I wanted to investigate were of interest to anyone.
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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.
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Unfortunately, the world has not been designed for the convenience of mathematicians.
BENOIT MANDELBROT