Editorial Review

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Subjects:  1. Computer Graphics - Design    2. Computers - Other Applications    3. General    4. Science/Mathematics    5. Technology    6. Telecommunications    7. Fractals    8. Image processing    9. Mathematics / General   

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Reviews (11)

Far better than any other book on this topic
This book is miles ahead of other Java gaming books...For one thing, this is an excellent book in its own right.For another, the other existing books on the topic suck.
Somewhat Disappointed - But hopeful for a second edition
This is the first time I've been disappointed by a book published by O'Reilly. There are, in my opinion, quite a few things wrong with this book. I'll mention a few.
Best book I've seen on the topic
I went through a few books on java game programming before I got this one and I must say that by fair its the best.I have a few years experience with java and wanted to make a few games for fun and this book gave me all the information I needed to get started.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computer Books: Languages    3. Computer Graphics - Game Programming    4. Computers    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. Programming Languages - Java    7. Video & Electronic - General    8. Computer animation    9. Computer drawing    10. Computer games    11. Computers / Languages / Programming    12. Computers / Programming Languages / Java    13. Java & variants    14. Java (Computer program language)    15. Programming    16. game programming, Java, J2ME, 3D, 2D,multiplayer, fractals, Andrew Davison   

Reviews (7)

Poorly explained
I have a university maths degree and found the book very obvious and drawn out for the first few chapters. In spite of this I looked forward to what was going to be explained later. Suddenly from a very simple and easy to understand explanation on the EMH he starts to use mathematics in his equations that I had a lot of difficulty following. There was very little or no explanation of how these equations were arrived at and a lot of mathematics and statisics is assumed. This book does not apply the theory in ny meaningful way to the markets let alone the capital markets in my opinion. I found that I took very little away from this book and would not recommend it to anyone who has basic mathematics like myself or is looking for some deeper insight into the markets. I would hate to have Mr Peters as a teacher based on his book.

A very good introduction
I read this book, the 1991 version, years ago. Around 1980 my own attempts to crack share prices statistically convinced me that all share prices behaved like a Gaussian random walk meaning that all speculation was comparable with playing roulette andI am not one of those guys who usually wins when gambling. This view was strengthened when the option pricing model came up, meaning that even thereal pro's in the field assume that share prices are nothing but a random walk. This book has opened my eyes to the fact that there is much more to randomness than just the Gaussian curve. Share prices are not fully random. Impressive is the demonstration that an RS analysis on the real data is different when applying the same RS analysis on scrambled data. So there is information hidden in these time series, somewhere. Since then I have picked up the subject of cracking time series again with great pleasure. I think this book is exceptionally well written and without it I doubt if I would have been able to follow Mandelbrot's book "scaling and fractals in finance" that I bought later. The book is about understanding a subject, not about learning a simple formula to apply on a time series.

A dated overview, with little real meat
The second edition of this book was published in 1996.The bookRead more

Subjects:  1. Accounting - General    2. Business & Economics    3. Business / Economics / Finance    4. Business/Economics    5. Capital market    6. Chaotic behavior in systems    7. Finance    8. Financial Markets    9. Fractals    10. Futures market    11. Mathematical models    12. Business & Economics / Finance    13. Chaos theory    14. Investment & securities    15. Mathematical theory of computation   

Reviews (13)

Good first book on the subject of simulating natural phenomena
This is a good introductory textbook for college undergraduate mathematics and computer science students that attempts to combine the theory of computation with some mathematical concepts and in the end, manages to model virtual life. To be specific, the book is built around the five pillars of Computation, Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation. There are better books on all of these subjects, but few others do such a good job of tying together key concepts from each discipline into the one theme of this book. However, there is only enough room to outline the included subjects rather than investigate them thoroughly.
Interesting Topics
Good book, [X] bucks is a bargain, it's worth twice that easily. Real "How Nature Works". Already is "Legend in the Making."
I recently became interested a lot in Nature. Especially, being someone in the field of Computer Science, the computational aspect. And this book is by far one of my favourite among all the "How Nature Works" kind of books I've read.Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computer Science    3. Computer Simulation    4. Computers    5. Computers - General Information    6. Programming - General    7. Chaos theory    8. Computers / Computer Science    9. Cybernetics & systems theory    10. Fractals    11. Mathematical theory of computation   

Editorial Review

Fascinating and authoritative, Read more

Reviews (10)

Excellent tutorial on nonlinearity
At least 50% of this book can be well understood by any 1st year, exact science student. There are a couple of mathematical issues that are more senior-like, but never mind. With the appropriate teaching or guidance, a lot of practical, advanced tasks can be tackled down.I could use this book all along for giving examples for college (university), undergraduate students of almost every mathematical subject: numerical analysis, calculus, linear algebra, group theory, algorithm theory, visualization in 2 and 3 dimensions, topology...you name it, after reading this book. No fuzzy theory or wavelets or any other advanced statistical method for dynamical systems is formally mentioned, though. However the concept of measure is very well introduced and described with examples. For physics is not bad for dynamical systems theory. Although no Hamiltonian or Lagrangian formalism is mentioned, the description on how to obtain Lyapunov exponents out of a set of differential equations is very good. Engineers get their share too: useful examples are given about, e.g., feedback and control theory (mind you, it is not a book specialized in, say, robotic control using chaos theory, but it is a good start). For philosophers and the layman there are quite a few pages as well. The foreword from Mitchel Feigenbaum, just to give an example, tells us a kind of summary which "warms up" the reader and "exorcises away" the possible fantasies an unprepared reader could have regarding (or against or in favor of) the word "chaos". Nice color plates for those with artistic inclinations and the graphics are just so very well printed, you can practically "follow" their computation. Not a bad book at all for your personal (or institutional) library, I may say.

A good introduction
Chaos as a physical theory began essentially in the 1970's, but as a mathematical field it has existed since the early 1900's. This book covers only the mathematical study of chaos, and is addressed to those readers who have a fairly strong background in undergraduate mathematics. A knowledge of dynamical systems and measure theory would help in the appreciation of the book, but are not absolutely necessary. The application of fractals and chaos to finance is now legendary, but other applications, such as to packet networks and surface physics are not so well-known. Current research in chaos is done predominantly in the context of information theory, wherein the goal is to understand the difference between chaos and noise, and develop mathematical tools to quantify this difference. The BASIC code in the book gives away its age, but can be easily translated to one of the symbolic computing languages available now, such as Maple or Mathematica. Simply a fantastic book
I purchased this book when it first came out, during the Read more

Subjects:  1. Applied    2. Chaotic Behavior in Systems    3. Computer Science    4. Fractals    5. General    6. Mathematics    7. Science    8. Science/Mathematics    9. Chaos theory    10. Mathematics / Differential Equations   

Reviews (9)

Sometimes annoying but instructive
Although instructive, this book is sometimes annoying to read. The author seems to be playing his cards very close to the vest and not telling us everything. A bad book for 7 th graders like me
this is a bad and very confusing book for a young student in, say... 7th grade, like me.The language is incomprehensible and there are no visual aids.

Opinión general
HUmmm!! parece interesante este librito.Pero la verdad busco uno donde encuentre aplicaciones a la ingenier�a.Read more

Subjects:  1. Applied    2. Computer Graphics - General    3. Fractal Geometry    4. Fractals (Computer Science)    5. Geometry - Algebraic    6. Mathematics    7. Physics    8. Science/Mathematics    9. Topology - Fractals    10. Computers / Computer Graphics / Design    11. Fractals    12. Geometry    13. Mathematics for scientists & engineers   

Subjects:  1. Computer Graphics - General    2. Electronics - General    3. Engineering    4. Engineering - Chemical & Biochemical    5. Engineering mathematics    6. Fractals    7. Mathematical Analysis    8. Mathematical models    9. Science/Mathematics    10. Technology    11. Technology & Industrial Arts    12. Artificial Evolution    13. Chemical Engineering    14. Fractional Calculus    15. Harmonic Analysis    16. Image Processing    17. Interated Function System    18. Mathematics for scientists & engineers    19. Multifractals    20. Signal Processing    21. Surface Science    22. Technology / Engineering / General    23. Telecommunications    24. Wavelets   

Reviews (1)

Many Thanks!
My name is Natalya Shalaginova. I live in Belorus, in Grodno. I am ateacher of computer graphics in lyceum. I and my students studing Painter 4and creating a lot of interesting pictures thanks to this book. Painter 4is not easy program and your book help me to teach my students step bystep. Thank you ever so much! my E-mail:shini@mail.ru P.S. I may send yousome works of my students, if you want. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books And Software    2. Computer Graphics - General    3. Computer graphics    4. Computers    5. Fractal design painter    6. Fractals (Computer Science)    7. Computer graphics software   

Reviews (4)

Creating Fractals
The software included inthis book is retro 20 century, lame.
Disappointing book creates but does not teach fractals
I really expected better from Roger Stevens. In the past he has written some truly excellent books on computer graphics that included working code. This particular book is very elementary with only the bare bones of the mathematics of fractals being given. Most of the book just shows a picture of each type of fractal covered, a screenshot of the included application and what you should type into the application to get the resulting fractal, and some text without equations on each fractal. If you really want to learn the mathematics behind fractals you should read "Chaos and Fractals" by Peitgen, and the older "Science of Fractal Images" by the same author. Both books are accessible yet go into sufficient mathematic detail that you could write working code. The authors even offer up code examples of their own. The second book I mentioned on fractal imaging has some great code samples and mathematics for creating beautiful realistic natural scenes of forests and lakes that are completely computer generated. I notice Amazon does not show the table of contents so I do that here:
Dissaponted
I got this book to learn how to generate fractals and use the included programm to generate large images for printing. While the programm is very flexible in terms of what it generates, maximum resolution is something like 600x400. There are better books that bescribe what fractals are. This book will not help you to set up calculations on you own and it's fractal generation programm is useless for anything other that on screen display. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computer Graphics - Game Programming    3. Computers    4. Computers - Games    5. Curves    6. Fractals    7. General    8. Programming - General    9. Topology - Fractals    10. Analytic topology    11. Computers / Computer Graphics / General   

Subjects:  1. Computational complexity    2. Fractals    3. Geometry - Analytic    4. Geometry - General    5. Logic    6. Mathematics    7. Moduli theory    8. Riemannian manifolds    9. Science/Mathematics    10. Topology - General    11. Geometry    12. Mathematics / Geometry / General   

Reviews (3)

Great book on fractals and imaging
This old book is a timeless gem. It goes into the details of the mathematics of fractals and also shows well-commented C code for producing fractal imagery along with good color illustrations.
One of the best (if no the best) in the feild
You cant go past this book, A must
In my opinion, the best work ever written in the category not-for-beginner-but-available-to-non-specialist (such as Beauty of Fractals, by the same authors). An easy answer to question "How can Igenerate a fractal image with my PC?", from brownian motion to Juliasets. A must for reader interested in fractals (a bit out-of-fashion butstill very interesting field). ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Graphics    2. Computers - Languages / Programming    3. Fractals    4. General    5. Geometry - General    6. Mathematics    7. Programming Languages - General    8. Science/Mathematics    9. Topology    10. Mathematics / General    11. Mathematics and Science   

Reviews (3)

Full coverage of fractal image compression
In my opinion, Fisher's book can serve as a very good tutorial to fractal image encoding. The first chapter, probably better known as the "SIGGRAPH '92 Course Notes", can be understand easily even by non-scientist and be used to code your own basic compression engine. The other chapters go more into detail and show how to develop your coder to a #1 compression engine. Unfortunately, you sometimes need to read between the math to get the necessary information. Anyway, after reading the book, I was able to create some nice code and to compress color images up to 1:25 ... 1:100 in seconds or minutes without problems !

Better than much other stuff
Borrowed this book from from my instructor and saw that it was much better than any standard image processing coursebook to learn some ideas from...

Buy Barnsley's book!
You get the impression this would have been better if written in Russian! The man has no idea how to write and be understood( Yuval Fisher) and his own work shows it. To drag others down with him is a form of greatness! Your unique Associates ID is:thefractaltransl ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Graphics - General    2. Computers - Languages / Programming    3. Digital Image Processing    4. Digital techniques    5. Fractals    6. Fractals (Computer Science)    7. General    8. Image compression    9. Image processing    10. Mathematics    11. Programming Languages - General    12. Science/Mathematics    13. Mathematics / General    14. Signal processing   

Reviews (3)

A frustratingly unstraightforward book.
This is not a book I would recommend. Whilst the subject matter is very interesting the style of presentation of the material is not to my liking. As opposed to simply explaining how fractal image compression works, theauthor indulges in chapters of overly philosophic theory. There is aplethora of mathmatical and logical notation (which you are left to fendwith for yourself). In its more pretentious moments it's almost comical,with the author becoming ridiculously poetic. Great IT described and worked by a mathematican!
There are a lot of details about fractal imaging, including IFS, RIFS, techniques. What is more, it provides many very good examples of worked images, figures, tables. All these make the book easier to read. I like it!

A beautiful book that shows the art of science.
It is an amazing book that presents fractal theory and compression algorithms in such a poetic manner.I was glad finally there is a book that covers fractal image compression in such a complete and systematic wayfrom Iterated Systems.The book also displayed the linkage betweenscience, philosophy and art by using fractal image compression as anexample, which is awesome.Most C-codes are very efficiently writen as forthe performance, so I wish there were more explanations for betterunderstanding.It is a book quite difficult to read for it is unique inits style as well as many subjects.Again, more details will be helpful. Overall, I am very much enjoyed the reading, found as the author said: youwill find "something new every time you open it." P.S. It's niceto have the free product Fractal Imager too! ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Graphics - General    2. Computers    3. Computers - Other Applications    4. Digital Image Processing    5. Digital techniques    6. Fractals    7. Fractals (Computer Science)    8. General    9. Image compression    10. Image processing    11. Reference    12. Techniques - General    13. Analytic topology    14. Mathematics / Applied    15. Mathematics for scientists & engineers    16. Signal processing   

Subjects:  1. Applied    2. Computer Vision    3. Digital Image Processing    4. Fractal Geometry    5. Geometry - Algebraic    6. Imaging Systems    7. Mathematics    8. Science/Mathematics    9. Technology & Industrial Arts    10. Topology - Fractals    11. Applied optics    12. Fractals    13. Geometry    14. Image processing    15. Industrial applications of scientific research & technological innovation    16. Signal processing    17. Technology / Engineering / Electrical    18. Topology   

Reviews (1)

Truth and Beauty
I had the good fortune to see this book in the making when it was a thick sheaf of flimsy printer paper. The words and images collided in gorgeous ways, and I knew something special was taking form.
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Subjects:  1. Art    2. Art & Art Instruction    3. Chaotic Behavior in Systems    4. Computer Graphics - General    5. Digital & Video    6. Dynamics    7. Fractals    8. General    9. Graphic Arts - General    10. Philosophy of science   

Reviews (4)

Great mathematics and graphics
The mathematician Felix Klein(1849-1925) made some great discoveries that can now be well understood by using computer graphics.Felix Klein is known for his work in non-euclidean geometry and for his work on the connections between geometry and group theory.
How mathematics can be used to create physical beauty
As a long-time reviewer of mathematics books, there was a time when I grew very bored with books written for the general mathematical audience. For years, it seemed mandatory that all contain a section on basic fractals and the Mandelbrot and Julia sets. It was not that the topics were not interesting, I found them fascinating, it was just that the explanations were all so similar that it became tedious to read them. Therefore, when I looked at the coverage of this book, I felt a pang of negative nostalgia, thinking that what I would find would be a repeat of what I had read so many times. Discrete groups made easy
[this review shall replace the already existing one]Read more

Subjects:  1. 1849-1925    2. Algebra - General    3. Discrete Mathematics    4. Fractals    5. Group Theory    6. Klein, Felix,    7. Mathematics    8. Science/Mathematics    9. Theory Of Groups    10. Algebra    11. Computing and Information Technology    12. Geometry    13. Mathematics / Applied   

Reviews (2)

Misleading
I guess this book would be helpful, provided you know a few things about this scam first: beware--software not actually included. I know it advertises that there is a CD that comes with the book, and that's true, but the CD doesn't have Painter 6 on it (not even in a student version, which is another misleading statement made in the book and on the CD itself). This is a book, apparently, for people who already have the program but simply don't know how to use it. I was hunting for Painter 6 itself, and I wasted my money on this thing. Don't make the same mistake.

This could just be the book you've been looking for.
There appears to be a dearth of Painter books about that treat instruction as thoroughly as this book does.Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Bks - Desktop Publishing    2. Computer Books: General    3. Computer Graphics - General    4. Computer Graphics - Painter    5. Computer graphics    6. Computers    7. Computers - Desktop Publishing    8. Electronic Publishing    9. Fractal design painter    10. Fractals (Computer Science)    11. Microcomputer Graphics    12. Computer Hardware & Operating Systems    13. Computer graphics software    14. Computers / Desktop Publishing / General    15. Fractals    16. General Theory of Computing   

Subjects:  1. Computer Books And Software    2. Computer Graphics - General    3. Computer drawing    4. Computers - Languages / Programming    5. Data processing    6. Fractals    7. Fractals (Computer Science)    8. Programming Languages - General    9. Computer Programming    10. Computer graphics software   

Reviews (1)

Chaos and fractals unleashed
If the words fractals, chaos and dynamical systems are attractive fixed points for your mind, go ahead. This is a book about this stuff. The three authors really unleash those topics, using numerous intriguing examples.The mathematical level is elementary. There is a good treatment bothmathematical and heuristic of the discrete dynamical system generated bythe logistic equation, this icon of the chaos and fractals theory. At eachchapter's end there is a program written in old-fashioned Basic language,but the skeleton may be recycled in, say, Mathematica or Matlab. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Science    2. Education    3. Fractals    4. Mathematics    5. Secondary    6. Secondary School Mathematics    7. Teaching Methods & Materials - Mathematics    8. Topology - Fractals    9. Computers-Computer Science    10. Mathematics / Mathematical Analysis    11. Teaching of a specific subject   

Reviews (5)

The Essence of Beauty
I spent all last evening reading snippets of The Beauty of Fractals (those few paragraphs that a layman could understand) and admiring the sheer beauty of the diagrams/maps.I had not realised there was an aesthetic component to mathematics, and I certainly did not know that aspects of what is generally thought of as a dry science can be so visually appealing, not to say stunning. Time goes by... the pictures fade
Amazon dot com gives no credit for my earlier reviews.... I wrote the first review without thinking or spell checking, fast.There are still parts of this book I can't duplicate! And parts that are just written so bad no one can understand them, but most of it stands the test of time, like Mandelbrot's article. This will probably be a classic in the future! I think the free Fractint documentation is probably better for a beginner or Hans Lauwerier's " Fractals".

Swirly
Although one of the earliest titles to bring fractals into the mainstream, 'The Beauty of Fractals' isn't as visually exciting as the follow-up, 'Chaos and Fractals', and it's a very dry read - in 1986 complex dynamics were an esoteric field of mathematics that had yet to transfer to student posters and rave videos. At this price it's restricted to people who absolutely need it, although along with 'Godel, Escher, Bach' it's one of the seminal hackish coffee-table books. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Comp