Fractals on PBS Nova

There is a great PBS Nova on the history and applications of fractals. They also have the video online.

Fractal Video Feedback 5 Min of Fame

A long while ago I made some fractal video feedback images with a web cam and a mirror and posted them to my web page. Recently they got included on the cover of the academic journal "Fractals". The article in the journal is here, but unfortunately requires paid access. Here is the original post. Michael Frame teaches a class at Yale on fractals and was the person that found my page and included the images in one of his papers. He is currently being treated for cancer and if anyone should know him be sure to extend my thanks for sending me a copy of the journal.

Black Swans

David Hume: "No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion."

Karl Popper: "You cannot know with any certainty that a proposition is true; you can only know that it is not true."

Malcom Gladwell on Black Swans and Blowing Up
Wikipedia page for Taleb's Book "Black Swans"
Wikipedia page for "Fooled By Randomness"

A few key ideas in all of this:

• The richest guy at the end of the day might be the luckiest and not the smartest.
• There are two paths to the same end, loosing a little bit every day and then winning big, and winning a little bit every day and then loosing big.
  
• People try too hard to explain randomness.
• Disruptive events are magnified in their intensity by not being expected.
• Disruptive events happen more often than one would expect because people are chaotic.
• People trust their own beliefs too much.
  
• Few people have the best strategy for taking advantage of the unknown.

Hex Grid

What are all of the combinations of a certain number of connected hexagons ? I wrote this java app to find out.