Talk:Mandelbrot set

High resolution image

Please provide high resolution image of Mandelbrot set, so I can see all the details. 188.123.243.103 (talk) 08:28, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

You can never see all the details of the Mandelbrot set, because it is a fractal. The section of the article headed "Image gallery of a zoom sequence" shows a sequence of increasingly magnified images of one part of the Mandelbrot set's border - the final magnification is about 10,000,000,000 to 1. Gandalf61 (talk) 08:52, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

You might enjoy making your own program using the pseudocode in the "For programmers" section that will let you enlarge for viewing any of the details of the set. I remember my delight when I first wrote a few lines of BASIC that made the beautiful Mandelbrot fractal appear on my PC screen. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 13:18, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

3d Mandelbulb

I notice the 3D Mandelbulb section got moved to a separate article.[1] (Note, the section was originally added by me a few months ago, and I changed an article someone had created at that time into a redirect to the section). IMO splitting the section to a separate article was not really necessary, so my inclination would be to move it back. The separate article makes the most sense if quite a bit more external sourcing has appeared since the section was written (which is possible) and expansion is planned based on the new sources. Even with a separate Mandelbulb article, I think it's still worth having a summary-style description in the main article, rather than just a "see also" cross-reference. 69.228.170.24 (talk) 19:56, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Deep Magnification

Any way we can get http://vimeo.com/12185093 into the article? Particularly noteworthy and definitely interesting. 68.38.100.91 (talk) 06:36, 15 August 2010 (UTC) Here is better animation fractal 2 throught not for an article. Edo 555 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:46, 11 September 2010 (UTC).

Needs re-writing for the non-mathematician

The authors of this page are so clever and brainy and it's nice that they've been able to show off by writing in a language only comprehensible to other mathematicians - but this page is probably now (the day that Benoit Mandelbrot sadly passed away) being visited by non-mathematicians who would like to find out more about the great man's work. They wil learn precisely nothing from this page, since it assumes a colossal amount of mathematical knowledge and mastery of advanced mathematical terminology. What a shame. 90.207.65.50 (talk) 09:20, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Can you be more precise ? Start with the first section of the article - the "lead". Where exactly does this assume "a colossal amount of mathematical knowledge and mastery of advanced mathematical terminology" ? Granted it assumes that the reader knows what complex numbers and the complex plane are - but without assuming this much knowledge, you can't say much more than "The Mandelbrot set is a pretty shape". Gandalf61 (talk) 09:42, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

@90.207.65.50, Wikipedia has fine articles about the great man Benoit Mandelbrot and about the Fractal. I think that an average reader would find both those articles accessible. However the title of this article "Mandelbrot Set" should have tipped you off at the beginning that it is about a mathematical concept. If you want to see this described with a minimum of math jargon, see this and this at Simple Wikipedia. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 13:20, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I think the original commenter has a point. Yes, you can't describe some concepts without certain terminology, but the emphasis should be firmly placed on making it as easy to understand as possible. I'm not convinced many lay readers would understand this at present and that's a problem that we should at least attempt to minimise.

Example of working code?

In my opinion, what makes the Mandelbrot set so particular and fascinating for programmers, is how easy it is to write a program that will exhibit so beautiful color shapes. In light of this, how would it be to include a working example in the article, like the following? The algorithm here is naive and sub-optimized, but it's easily understandable and pretty powerful for easily experimenting at home...

  #include <SDL.h>
  	
  #define DIM 400.0
  	
  int main() {
       SDL_Surface *screen = SDL_SetVideoMode(DIM, DIM, 0, 0);
       SDL_Surface *surface = SDL_CreateRGBSurface(SDL_SWSURFACE, DIM, DIM, 24, 0xFF, 0xFF00, 0xFF0000, 0);
  		
       double fact = 2;
       double cx = -0.74364500005891;
       double cy = 0.13182700000109;
  		
       while (fact > 1e-18) {
            double xa = cx - fact;
            double ya = cy - fact;
            int y;
  			
            for (y = 0; y < DIM; y++) {
                 Uint8 *pixline = surface->pixels + y*surface->pitch;
                 double y0 = ya + y/DIM*2*fact;
                 int x;
                 for (x = 0; x < DIM; x++) {
                      double x0 = xa + x/DIM*2*fact;
                      double xn = 0, yn = 0, tmpxn;
                      int i;
                      for (i = 0; i<512; i++) {
                           tmpxn = xn*xn - yn*yn + x0;
                           yn = 2*xn*yn + y0;
                           xn = tmpxn;
                           if (xn*xn + yn*yn > 4)
                                break;  // approximate infinity
                      }
                      if (i == 512) {
                           // in Mandelbrot set
                           pixline[x*3] = pixline[x*3+1] = pixline[x*3+2] = 0;
                      } else {
                           // not in Mandelbrot set; use escape iteration value to set color (grades of blue then white)
                           pixline[x*3] = pixline[x*3+1] = i < 256 ? 0 : i - 256;
                           pixline[x*3+2] = i < 256 ? i : 255;
                      }
                 }
            }
  			
            SDL_BlitSurface(surface, NULL, screen, NULL);
            SDL_Flip(screen);
            fact /= 2;
       }
  		
       SDL_Quit();
       return(0);
  }

That is easily compiled and run under Linux with "gcc `sdl-config --cflags --libs` -O3 mandelbrot.c && ./a.out" (and probably as easy under Windows, if someone wishes to tell how).

Gc (talk) 21:14, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Adding your own code to the article would be an example of original research, which is strongly discouraged in Wikipedia. Gandalf61 (talk) 21:17, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

However this is good tutorial material for the Wikibook on Fractals. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 07:54, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Fine, but I think there's a lot of that already in wikipedia. For example in french one you can see a Logo program on bottom of http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courbe_de_Gosper so why it is ok on some pages and not ok on some others? Gc (talk) 09:41, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Thx for your code. I have put it here. I think also about adding to wikibooks about fractals page/pages about computer graphic techniques, like drawing on the screen, direct creating image files. drawing in the memory. Your program would be good there. Regards --Adam majewski (talk) 14:34, 18 October 2010 (UTC)