Reviews (7)

The Colours of Infinitiy
I have "accidentally" seen parts of the video during a local PBS fund drive.It intrigued me so much that I started looking on the internet for details.I found the right source, Amazon, and purchased the book and video.
NTSC compatible now.
I had a concern about whether the DVD was NTSC compatible as I had read in the reviews that the CVD was in the PAL format and one review that the DVD was now in the NTSC foormat.
DVD problems were corrected
The DVD is now correct for American DVD players.Beautiful book accompanied by beautiful documentary. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Geometry - General    2. Mathematics    3. Science/Mathematics    4. Topology - Fractals    5. Fractals    6. Mathematics / Geometry / General    7. Popular science   

Reviews (12)

The truth about how to become a successful trader
I purchased this book because I was trading with a method that used the awesome oscillator. I figured I should know something about the person who created it. I got much more than that. The book helped me to quit focusing on trading techniques and to start looking at my own mental state for trading. Turning inward has allowed me build better confidence in myself and mymethod. That in turn allows me to trade with a mindset which successful traders have. The fact that the book also presents a very viable trading method is just an added bonus. This book and "Trading In The Zone" by Mark Douglas transformed my trading career.

Trading Books
As an experienced trader who has bought thousands of dollars of trading books from Amazon I found this one less than impressive.
Mind blowing
The actual trading methodology is not really of interest to me. As a matter of fact, it's ironic that in the first half of the book statements such as "there is no magic system" and "all mechanical systems will fail" are made, then in the second half of the book a rather mechanical trading system that is referred to as "automagic" is described.
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Subjects:  1. Business & Economics    2. Business / Economics / Finance    3. Business/Economics    4. Capital market    5. Chaos Theory (Mathematics)    6. Chaotic behavior in systems    7. Finance    8. Fractals    9. Futures And Options Trading    10. Futures market    11. Investments & Securities - General    12. Mathematical models    13. Business & Economics / Finance    14. Investment & securities   

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   

Features

• Illustrated

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   

Editorial Review

Imagine an equilateral triangle. Now, imagine smaller equilateral triangles perched in the center of each side of the original triangle--you have a Star of David. Now, place still smaller equilateral triangles in the center of each of the star's 12 sides. Repeat this process infinitely and you have a Koch snowflake, a mind-bending geometric figure with an infinitely large perimeter, yet with a finite area. This is an example of the kind of mathematical puzzles that this book addresses.Read more

Reviews (13)

changed the way I look at the world
Visually, I see nature in a much richer way.As an artist, I find fractals to be inexhaustable inspiration.There is no better text to explain Mandlebrot's theories in a detailed but understandable way than the seminal work itself.Sometimes I got lost in the math, but most of it I could follow.I found helpful the notes in the text indicating which parts were mathematical asides for the technically-minded readers, where other readers could skip ahead without losing any understanding.the illustrations are evocative and timeless diagrams of real phenomena. If I were a more spiritual person, I am sure this book would be proof of the existence of god.

A seminal work
Very few books have so many quotes as this one. I am not sure if there is much left to be said, but I know this. For those professionals who still think that fractals are "spurious solutions coming from the discretization of differential equations", should take a closer look to this book. Not only won't harm, but also will show many interesting features about the nature of fractals and the "fractality" of nature, besides the fact that many of them come from *difference* equations, which are not necessarily related to the discretization of a differential equation. This book is based on serious work from many well-reputed mathematicians before Mandelbrot, e.g., Haussdorff, Lyapunov and some others. Although the book does talk about the mathematics behind fractals (wouldn't be so much a book of mathematics if it didn't, but also a philosophical one) and the necessity of coining some new mathematical terms, it also contains so much about history of mathematics, the path that leads towards fractals. As I said, the book is many times quoted, but (without trying to point a firing, accusing finger), there is a difference in quoting a book because it is famous, and another actually reading it, and having enlightenment for our own sake. Certainly I think is a "must-have-it" for most mathematicians,for many physicists, philosophers of science and engineers, but also it wouldn't be a bad guest in the library of any layman, provided the layman overcomes for some minutes the initial "classical" fear to mathematics. I would say this layman won't regret it at all. Mandelbrot does explain most of the concepts practically "ab initio", from the very scratch, including etymology and history as I previously said. One little thing against this book though: it doesn't have so many color plates as some other books on the subject, but it does have all the needed graphics to grasp the concepts.

Nice coffee table book? Not much else.
The BOOK by the MAN who coined the name fractal and brought them
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Subjects:  1. Fractals    2. General    3. Geometry    4. Geometry - General    5. Mathematical models    6. Mathematics    7. Science    8. Science/Mathematics    9. Stochastic processes    10. Earth Sciences    11. Science / General   

Reviews (10)

Let's clear this up
C=pi*d.That means the diameter has to be **multiplied** by "three and a little bit" in order to be equivalent to, or wrap around, the circumference of the circle.It takes "three and a little bit" diameters to get around the circle one time, not one diameter to get around the circle three and a little bit times.The engineer was right!Other than that, it was still a pretty good book, though.If you're a teacher with an older class, you can see if they can spot the error.

Could I help clarify?
I believe the quote about the circumference and diameter is worded incorrectly.We all know that the size of the diameter and circumference are proportional (hence pi), but the diameter would never wrap around a circumference 3 and a little times!This is obviously false because the circumference is larger than the diameter.The circumference would wrap around the diameter 3 and a little times.Please check your books to determine if the quote is correct in R. Krapf's review - if so, then the book is WRONG!

Knowledge and real imaginative fun.
If you look for children's books long on imagination, fun and knowledge and are put off by the flood of preachy, sermonizing and "let me tell you how to be" books.This is for you.
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Subjects:  1. General    2. Juvenile literature    3. Mathematics    4. Mathematics (General)    5. Science/Mathematics   

Reviews (5)

A rare find
I agree with all that was said by the other reviews here but add one important point. The physical layout, (typeface, drawings, whitespace etc.) of this book is brilliantly done. This is often overlooked by the producers of technical works who do it "on the cheap", but it is vital if one is to use the book day after day, as I have had to.
What every student should know about fractals.
Fractals make headlines from time to time[--are they everywhere?], and and they make lovely color pictures; but they are also part of a substantial mathematical theory, one with an Theoretical as well as practical insight
The first part of the book is essentially of a theoretical nature, with a thorough treatment of fractal geometry at a mathematical point of view. The second part on the other hand provides a flavour of the problems of fractal geometry in practice...so mathematicians as well as people interested in applications only should both find this book interesting. The maths are not easy but quite "understandable" for science undergrads...some notions of calculus or topology would help... but the introduction is excellent and allows anyone to follow the course of the book (but for understanding the proofs a good math background is required).Read more

Subjects:  1. Fractal Geometry    2. Fractals    3. Geometry - General    4. Mathematics    5. Science/Mathematics    6. Topology - Fractals   

Reviews (8)

For the uninitiated!.--Fun too!
For the uninitiated! --The author combines insight with story telling. He has a story to tell, and does it well! Not only does he know the theory inside out, he has the ability to get accross the central points so it (almost) seems easy, in any case entertaining, using pictures (including cartoons), humor, and equations when they are needed. He further make clear the many fascinating links between chaos theory, algorithms, technology, and areas of pure math, such as number theory. Highly recommended!

A comprehensive introduction to chaos in two levels
This book can be read in two different ways: Best book on chaos
This book is a complete guide of all possible situations in science where you may encounter chaos. It provides for every situation an intuitive as well as very formal view of every problem and the corresponding solution. The main drawback concerns its relative inaccessibility for non-scientific people, it requires a quite important scientific background to understand the formal part. Anyway, even for the lay-man, it can be interesting to read, in order to understand the widespread of chaos and non-linearity in real-life situations, not just the purely scientific-related ones.Read more

Subjects:  1. Physics    2. Science    3. Science/Mathematics    4. Symmetry (Physics)    5. Chaos theory    6. Fractals   

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 (1)

A very good book
This is a very good book in it's subject. The examples taken from Quantum Mechanics ,Fractals and General Relativity are quite impressive.But I would expect even more problems taken from the field of Electrodynamics.I think that this book is a"must have" for anyone who's interesting in computational methods for solving basic problems of theoretical physics. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Data processing    2. Mathematica (Computer file)    3. Mathematical Physics    4. Physics    5. Quantum Theory    6. Science    7. Science/Mathematics    8. Science / Mathematical Physics    9. Theoretical methods   

Reviews (18)

Incomprehensible
I am a lawyer and have spent most of my life reading, and had read many books on trading before I read this one.It looked like the holy grail, so the three or four key chapters, I read over and over trying to determine 3 simple things:Where to buy/sell short, where to place the stop loss, where to exit the trade. I confess, I was never able to determine that, from the text, although the author seems to assume that he has made that clear to the reader.

Joke
The five stars is only for the cover.However, the content of the book is pathetic.I have read many trading books and several chaos books and I can honestly say this book is neither.I fell for the enlightened self-similar structure cover and wasted my money.Don't repeat my mistake. Trader Development
This book really is mistitled.Chaos theory for markets is not presented, so look elsewhere for that.The book does present a good theory for the psychology of trading such as "traders differ on value but agree on price" as motivation and explains the development of traders from novice, intermediate, and advanced (skip master and expert level)and the goals for each level.Unfortunately, the methodology for trading with a Chaos background is not touched upon.Read more

Subjects:  1. Accounting - General    2. Business / Economics / Finance    3. Business/Economics    4. Capital market    5. Fractals    6. Futures market    7. Investment Finance    8. Investments & Securities - Futures    9. Mathematical models    10. Business & Economics / Investments & Securities    11. Chaos theory    12. Investment & securities   

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   

Reviews (1)

Tremendous resource
This book is an immense collection of research on the application of complex systems to urban spatial analysis. While this book is not extensive and is probably not meant as a textbook on complex systems in its entirety, I highly recommend it for those interested in urban spatial analysis. The applications of the techniques go beyond geography and are useful in sociology, economics, or urban planning. A caveat that I should add is that the book is quite dense with methods and formulas and is probably not best to approach this book without some knowledge of advanced statistics. However, the theoretical overviews provided more than allow for those without this background to get something out of it. In short, if you are a graduate student, professor, or researcher I'd recommend this book for an insightful and important take on the nature of cities and urban analysis. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. City planning    2. Computer simulation    3. Mathematical models    4. Political Science    5. Politics / Current Events    6. Politics/International Relations    7. Public Policy - City Planning & Urban Dev.    8. Simulation models    9. Political Science / City Planning & Urban Development    10. Urban & municipal planning    11. Urban communities   

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   

Reviews (35)

...with tangerine trees and marmalade skies...
Orthodox economics is very formal using complex models to predict future behaviour. Most economists, like meteorologists, are not held accountable for their predictions.
Mandelbrot repeatedly claims standard models...
...are incorrect and that his fractal models are much better. Of course if his models were worth more than the paper they're written on Mandelbrot wouldn't have to write books like this because he'd be cleaning out everyone else's wallets on the stock market. In particular, if it's true that extreme events are more unlikely than most people think then he could easily exploit this with a suitable derivative. But the fact is, Mandelbrot doesn't know anything that countless other traders don't already know. So instead Mandelbrot is forced to resort to telling people how smart he is through his books rather than actually being smart enough to make a killing on Wall Street.
Full of self-praise, partially redundant, yet some beautiful ideas
First of all, a caveat: I don't know for what reasons Mandelbrot has become such an extremist for his own quest, to push the application of fractal geometry in fields such as finance. I've never read a book that is so blatantly full of self-praise - Mandelbrot constantly speaks about *his* fractal geometry, *his* findings 40 years ahead of anyone else on what's wrong with modern financial theory, *his* status as a lone warrior against seemingly obsolete, but firmly established scientific theories etc. Why does this matter? One, stories on how he wasn't able to get his early papers published in financial journals and how he then called up publishers etc. make up quite a significant part of the book, yet add absolutely nothing to the description of the scientific theories in the book. Two, it just inevitably makes you wonder why Mandelbrot cannot just let his theories and data proofs speak for themselves - do they maybe need the loud fanfares just because they lack the persuasiveness to speak for themselves...? (And finally, much of his showing off is just plainly annoying to read.)
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Subjects:  1. Business & Economics    2. Business / Economics / Finance    3. Business/Economics    4. Capital market    5. General    6. Investment analysis    7. Marketing - General    8. Prices    9. Stocks    10. Finance    11. Fractals   

Reviews (1)

Random fractals
From the standpoint of deterministic dynamics and multifractals defined by a generating partition, I do not like this book. However, for affine fractals and methods like R/S analysis it provides a very nice introduction! Like Hull's book on options, stochastic calculus is unfortunately not formulated using Ito calculus. Also nice, the gambler's ruin is presented as an example of affine scaling. What is missing is an introductory discussion of multiaffine scaling, which is of interest for soft turbulence in fluids (an introduction to multiaffine scaling with simple examples can be found in the book on surface fluctuations by Barabasi and Stanley). ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Fractals    2. Geometry - General    3. Mathematical Physics    4. Mathematics    5. Science    6. Science/Mathematics    7. Mathematics for scientists & engineers    8. Science / Mathematical Physics