Fractals Everywhere

Rating:
Summary: Sometimes annoying but instructive
Review: Although instructive, this book is sometimes annoying to read. The author seems to be playing his cards very close to the vest and not telling us everything.

For instance, there is little or no instruction on how to implement the IFS attractors presented as a panacea for data compression. This seems to be proprietary to his company. It also seems that hands-on manipulation is crucial to the images' production, contrary to the author's claims.

If you can understand the mathematics you may find the book useful, as I did when writing my book Fractals in MUsic.

Rating:
Summary: A Modern Classic by a Fractal Giant
Review: From the man who gave us fractal data compression this introduction to fractals gives the reader a look at a wide scale of fractals and introduces the basics of similarity and scaling. A must for the beginner's library. Your unique Associates ID is: thefractaltransl.

Rating:
Summary: A bad book for 7 th graders like me
Review: HUmmm!! parece interesante este librito. Pero la verdad busco uno donde encuentre aplicaciones a la ingeniería.
Estos libros de teoría suelen ponerse aburridos al no tener sufuciente información sobre aplicaciones.
De todos modos apenas lo tenga en las manos y lo mire doy una opinión más seria de este.

Rating:
Summary: Opinión general
Review: HUmmm!! parece interesante este librito. Pero la verdad busco uno donde encuentre aplicaciones a la ingeniería.
Estos libros de teoría suelen ponerse aburridos al no tener sufuciente información sobre aplicaciones.
De todos modos apenas lo tenga en las manos y lo mire doy una opinión más seria de este.

Rating:
Summary: Opinión general
Review: HUmmm!! parece interesante este librito. Pero la verdad busco uno donde encuentre aplicaciones a la ingeniería.
Estos libros de teoría suelen ponerse aburridos al no tener sufuciente información sobre aplicaciones.
De todos modos apenas lo tenga en las manos y lo mire doy una opinión más seria de este.

Rating:
Summary: Great book for understanding the beauty of Fractals
Review: If anyone wants to know about fractals, I recommend him to read this book. It will give him a clear idea about the underlying concept of creating fractals.

Rating:
Summary: Barnsley's Overview of Fractals is Stunning
Review: This book is an eye popping experience for anyone wishing to explore the nature of fractal geometry. A must have reference for anyone seriously studying the subject. If you are trying to Model objects in the physical world using fractals this is the book to get you jump started.

Rating:
Summary: Good computer graphics book. Bad mathematics book.
Review: This book was written by a regarded expert in the fields of digital image processing and data compression, and illustrates well how some "abstract" mathematical concepts can be applied successfully to such purposes.

However, it is evident that it was written in a rush, and the results can be seen. I have found a lot of typographic mistakes, errors in the exercises, and even errors in some of its mathematical proofs. Also, the author pays almost no attention to the fundamental concept of fractal geometry: the fractal dimension.

I read this book because I needed a strong background in fractal geometry to write my Bachelor's thesis, but got dissapointed because of its mathematical defficiencies, and eventually decided to move to better sources on the subject.

Please check my other reviews in my member page (just click on my name above).

Rating:
Summary: A bad book for 7 th graders like me
Review: this is a bad and very confusing book for a young student in, say... 7th grade, like me. The language is incomprehensible and there are no visual aids.

Rating:
Summary: Good book for applications of fractal geometry, but....
Review: This is a good book on applications of fractals; the chapters on modeling natural objects with iterated function systems (IFS) and fractal interpolation are especially useful. Many standard topics are included, for example, fractal dimension, Julia and Mandelbrot sets, chaos and the shift dynamical system. Some of the illustrations are captivating.

However, the book is not well organized, and the writing is extremely wordy to the point of being irritating. Some paragraphs read as if they belonged to a "Dummies" handbook. Also, I have to agree with one reviewer that the treatment of fractal dimension is poor. For one thing, it does not fully develop the intuition behind the concept-- much less the math. This same remark holds for the chapter on chaotic dynamics.

In summary, the book is fine for applications, but supplement your reading with a more substantial text.