Benoit Mandelbrot died of pancreatic cancer. I have bought his books about fractals, but never saw any application of them in the real world. Nice graphics but no use in stock exchange. He was a Litvak Jew.
6 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Actually fractals are used in technical analysis - see this:
IIRC the book had some fascinating discussions on the coastline of Britain and river flow in the Nile. Mandelbrot was apparently concerned that mathematics was becoming too analytical and geometric insights were being derided as something for lesser mortals in the wake of movements like the Bourbaki school. He had a hard life as a refugee in France. God rest his soul.
I'm not a believer in technical analysis but it was an interesting insight that if you look at the graph of price fluctuation for a day, a week, a month or a year (with appropriate scaling) you see the exact same type of curves and patterns - "head and shoulders", etc. To me this is just more proof that the patterns are random (and therefore of no predictive value) but others see it differently.
Fractals do have indisputable real world applications that are beyond voodoo - for example nowadays they use "fractal antennas" in cell phones that are efficient at multiple frequencies. A lot of computer graphics is based on fractals - this is how you animate realistic looking trees, mountains, etc.
6 comments:
Actually fractals are used in technical analysis - see this:
http://www.seemegetrich.com/2007/03/investing-metaphor-2-fractals.html
and see this interview with Mandelbrot himself:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/mandelbrot-fractal.html
Mandelbrot was the kind of genius that Jews specialize in producing, not exclusively but disproportionately.
K
IIRC the book had some fascinating discussions on the coastline of Britain and river flow in the Nile. Mandelbrot was apparently concerned that mathematics was becoming too analytical and geometric insights were being derided as something for lesser mortals in the wake of movements like the Bourbaki school. He had a hard life as a refugee in France. God rest his soul.
I could not find any application for fractals in investing. Technical analysis is voodoo science - dont you think so?
I'm not a believer in technical analysis but it was an interesting insight that if you look at the graph of price fluctuation for a day, a week, a month or a year (with appropriate scaling) you see the exact same type of curves and patterns - "head and shoulders", etc. To me this is just more proof that the patterns are random (and therefore of no predictive value) but others see it differently.
Fractals do have indisputable real world applications that are beyond voodoo - for example nowadays they use "fractal antennas" in cell phones that are efficient at multiple frequencies. A lot of computer graphics is based on fractals - this is how you animate realistic looking trees, mountains, etc.
K
May be. I found fractals rather banal. But I find maths banal.
J said...
But I find maths banal.
But you said that you wanted to ponder the mysteries of the universe a TAU's math department!
Post a Comment