Oliver Wendell Holmes famously once wrote, "A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions." My mind, and assuredly those of countless others, never did after ...

Fractals have become a common sight, thanks to computer imagery In 1975, a new word came into use, when a maverick mathematician made an important discovery. So what are fractals? And why are they ...

Unexpectedly, the length of a country’s coastline depends on your ruler. As the measuring stick gets shorter (left to right), it can better fit within Great Britain’s nooks and crannies. The shorter ...

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Computer scientist Keenan Crane, PhD, is asked to explain fractals to 5 different people; a child, a teen, a college student, a grad student, and an expert. of increasing complexity. So fractals are a ...

And these have smaller still to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum. — Jonathan Swift, from "On Poetry: A Rhapsody" The satirist and author of Gulliver's Travels might have been talking about ...