Friend and fellow blogger Brian has just concluded his all week exploration of the Mandelbrot set, one of the most well-known and intricate fractals. If you missed it, I’ve compiled the links below:
Understanding Fractals: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4
Brian has a real talent for taking complicated math concepts and explaining them simply, but fractals have been around long before you needed computers and complex planes to create them. I thought it would be fun to spend next week taking a look at some Fractals you can make with just pencil and paper.
Next week we’ll learn how to draw four fractals, and wrap it up on Friday with a little surprise. The fractals you’ll learn how to make are the Sierpinski Triangle, the Koch Snowflake, the Dragon Curve and the Hilbert Curve (images courtesy of Wikipedia).
All of the above fractals can be generated without an equation, in some cases without even lifting your pencil from the paper. But they all have properties that are used in consumer electronics, in describing coastlines and in redefining what we call shapes, lines and dimension. And they were discovered over 100 years ago! Each day we’ll have a going deeper section, describing some of the math and applications of each fractal, but also show you how to make these images yourself (with some crude pencil renderings from your blogger and host).
Fractals are cool, and something that everyone can learn how to make! Without a computer!
Hope you’ll enjoy!
P.S. Thanks Brian for a great series. They’ve been like an early birthday present.
[BTW] : Ben Trube, Writer 
Looking forward to yours as well Ben.
Ditto. Glad you enjoyed it so much! I’m curious about the Dragon Curve.