4/26/2004: Buddhabrot

[Undertoad]

Thanks to mrputter for pointing this out.

Melinda Green developed different ways to display the Mandelbrot Set and found that they became rather Buddha-esque. The above is possibly the least interesting of all of them, so go to the page and check them out.

What's the Mandelbrot Set, you ask. Here's a quick introduction to it. It's hard math... basically, it's a mathematical function that is a fractal. What's a fractal, you ask? You ask some damn difficult questions don't you? I didn't major in math!

Part of the point, I guess, is that certain things are defined as just a bunch of little things just like it. Which is something you might not be able to see right away, unless you look differently at it. Like one guy did with this cauliflower, to display its fractal qualities. In computer science we call that recursion, although on reading the Wikipedia entry on fractals I learned that they are not all recursive, and so I don't think I understand fractals exactly. (Paranoid, do you want to take a shot here?)

Note that even though the images resemble Hindu art, they were actually generated completely automatically, without any sort of human artistic intervention. When I first tried using the new technique, I had no idea what the images might look like and was completely surprised by the results.

Figure that this Buddha-like image is made up of infinite number of smaller Buddhas, and if you looked closer at it (especially by examining the graph produced by fractions with increasingly significant digits) you'd see them. And now, your mind should be completely blown, eh?

The spiritual amongst us might take some meaning in finding the Buddha in a mathematical formula. The skeptical amongst us well remember the "face on Mars", or the Virgin Mary in a tree stump, or the Virgin Mary in the side of a fence, and the countless children examining clouds for figures they could see. We find patterns; it's what we do, we humans.

And this is only a two-dimensional graph anyway. When they find a function to produce a three-dimensional Buddha, then I'll be impressed. (I tried to produce one myself... it involved overeating.)