Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Fractal/archive1

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[edit] Fractal

I noticed we don't have many featured articles on mathematics. This is one of the few math topics with widespread appeal and lots of pretty pictures. Although it looks a bit short at first, if you follow the links to the specific types of fractals, there's a lot of material. I've verified the image copyrights and they all appear to be GFDL or public domain. --Shibboleth 23:56, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support. Having spent hours upon hour exploring microscopic regions of the Mandelbrot set, I can only say, "It's about time..." Denni☯ 05:49, 2004 Jul 3 (UTC)
• (Not a vote). It looks like all of the images are in the public domain (created by Wikipedians), but some fail to note so explicitly. Jeronimo 11:31, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Now the only picture that does not explicitly specify public domain or GFDL is the Koch snowflake picture. Unfortunately the user who added it is not around anymore, so we cannot ask him to add the label. But I am inclined to think an elementary mathematical illustration like this cannot be copyrighted anyway. If it really bothers someone, it should be easy to re-create. --Shibboleth 21:38, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Object. 1) The lead section needs to be longer, including a mention that "fractal"s is derived have "fractional dimension", amongst other things. 2) We should discuss Fractal art in this article to some extent, given that most laymen encounter fractals in that form. 3) Similarly there needs to be a much more in-depth discussion of applications: Fractal landscape, Fractal compression...; we currently have "Fractal techniques have also been employed in fractal image compression, as well as a variety of scientific disciplines." 4) The article emphasises self-similarity; an image sequence would be one obvious way to illustrate this concept, e.g. a sequence of zooms on a fractal, showing self-similarity on different scales. 5) You can't read much about fractals without bumping into a discussion of chaos theory; what's the link? The article doesn't discuss this. — Matt 16:39, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[Etymology of fractal: although some web sources say fractal is derived from "fractional dimension", Mandelbrot himself says he coined it from the Latin fractus - see, for example, Mandelbrot's essay "Fractals - a geometry of nature" in "The New Scientist Guide to Chaos". I have added this to the article.Gandalf61 11:41, Jul 4, 2004 (UTC)]

Ah, great. Maybe it's worth mentioning the mis-etymology of "fractal" as well, since it's quite common? — Matt 15:36, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I've added a sequence of images demonstrating self-similarity. [[User:Sverdrup|❝Sverdrup❞]] 13:54, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, spot on. — Matt 15:36, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This is good but I don't find the sequence of images quite clear enough as it is. The problem is that since they all look so similar, it's hard to understand at first sight that the fourth image is a 100x (or whatever) magnification of the first: it looked to me at first like just a big rotated chunk of the first, until I understood that your red squares meant "zoom". I would like a label added to the top of each image saying "Magnification: 1x", "Magnification: 5x", "Magnification: 25x" (or whatever the exact numbers are). Or even better, nice arrows linking the red square of one image with the next image. Though come to think of it I don't really know which would work better. --Shibboleth 21:59, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• Support Avala 19:34, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Neutral - the article looks fantastic and reads fine but it does seem to be a bit short. I think some basic expansion is needed, but since I don't know much about this topic, I don't know what to suggest (and thus my non-vote). :( --mav 10:11, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Jules Ruis says: I want to add some information about the Julius Ruis Set, being a smart presentation of 400 Julia sets, showing that the Mandelbrot set is the parameter basin of all closed Julia sets.