Chaos and Fractals: The Mathematics Behind the Computer Graphics (Proceedings of Symposia in Applied Mathematics) [Hardcover]

Robert L. Devaney (Author), Linda Keen (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0821801376 | ISBN-13: 978-0821801376 | Publication Date: July 1989

This volume contains the proceedings of a highly successful AMS Short Course on Chaos and Fractals, held during the AMS Centennial Celebration in Providence, Rhode Island in August 1988. Chaos and fractals have been the subject of great interest in recent years and have proven to be useful in a variety of areas of mathematics and the sciences. The purpose of the short course was to provide a solid introduction to the mathematics underlying the notions of chaos and fractals. The papers in this book range over such topics as dynamical systems theory, Julia sets, the Mandelbrot set, attractors, the Smale horseshoe, calculus on fractals, and applications to data compression. The authors represented here are some of the top experts in this field. Aimed at beginning graduate students, college and university mathematics instructors, and non-mathematics researchers, this book provides readable expositions of several exciting topics of contemporary research.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Amer Mathematical Society (July 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0821801376
• ISBN-13: 978-0821801376
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,977,341 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat dated, but still a good introduction to chaos and fractals, April 17, 2008

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Chaos and Fractals: The Mathematics Behind the Computer Graphics (Proceedings of Symposia in Applied Mathematics) (Hardcover)

This material is the collection of lecture notes used for a short course presented by the American Mathematical Society in 1988. Therefore, the material is somewhat dated. The topics are:

*) Dynamics of simple maps
*) Nonlinear oscillations and the Smale horseshoe map
*) Fractal basin boundaries and chaotic attractors
*) Julia sets
*) The Mandelbroit set
*) Introduction to fractals
*) Iterated function systems

However, despite the passage of almost twenty years, this material is still an excellent introduction to these subjects. At the time of the conference, the material was new, exciting and it seemed that new applications of chaos and attractors were being discovered on a daily basis. At the time, I was a regular reader of the weekly "Science News" magazine and hardly an issue went by without a mention of chaos or fractals. Since it was so new, the material had to be presented at a level that led to understanding. Therefore, the modern reader that is relatively ignorant of the topics can get a great deal of benefit from this book.