The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward
by Benoit Mandelbrot
from Basic Books
The Fractal Geometry of Nature
by Benoit B. Mandelbrot
from W. H. Freeman
Imagine an equilateral triangle. Now, imagine smaller equilateral triangles perched in the center of each side of the original triangle--you have a Star of David. Now, place still smaller equilateral triangles in the center of each of the star's 12 sides. Repeat this process infinitely and you have a Koch snowflake, a mind-bending geometric figure with an infinitely large perimeter, yet with a finite area. This is an example of the kind of mathematical puzzles that this book addresses.
The Fractal Geometry of Nature is a mathematics text. But buried in the deltas and lambdas and integrals, even a layperson can pick out and appreciate Mandelbrot's point: that somewhere in mathematics, there is an explanation for nature. It is not a coincidence that fractal math is so good at generating images of cliffs and shorelines and capillary beds.
Now that the field has expanded greatly with many active researchers, Mandelbrot presents the definitive overview of the origins of his ideas and their new applications. The Fractal Geometry of Nature is based on his highly acclaimed earlier work, but has much broader and deeper coverage and more extensive illustrations.
Fractals, Googols, and Other Mathematical Tales
by Theoni Pappas
from Wide World Publishing, Tetra
A new treasure trove of stories that make mathematical ideas come to life with an unusual cast of characters. This book explores mathematical concepts and topics such as real numbers, exponents, dimensions, and geometry in both serious and humorous ways. 50 line drawings.
Killer Game Programming in Java
by Andrew Davison
from O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Although the number of commercial Java games is still small compared to those written in C or C++, the market is expanding rapidly. Recent updates to Java make it faster and easier to create powerful gaming applications-particularly Java 3D-is fueling an explosive growth in Java games. Java games like Puzzle Pirates, Chrome, Star Wars Galaxies, Runescape, Alien Flux, Kingdom of Wars, Law and Order II, Roboforge, Tom Clancy's Politika, and scores of others have earned awards and become bestsellers.
Java developers new to graphics and game programming, as well as game developers new to Java 3D, will find "Killer Game Programming in Java" invaluable. This new book is a practical introduction to the latest Java graphics and game programming technologies and techniques. It is the first book to thoroughly cover Java's 3D capabilities for all types of graphics and game development projects.
"Killer Game Programming in Java" is a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know to program cool, testosterone-drenched Java games. It will give you reusable techniques to create everything from fast, full-screen action games to multiplayer 3D games. In addition to the most thorough coverage of Java 3D available, "Killer Game Programming in Java" also clearly details the older, better-known 2D APIs, 3D sprites, animated 3D sprites, first-person shooter programming, sound, fractals, and networked games. "Killer Game Programming in Java" is a must-have for anyone who wants to create adrenaline-fueled games in Java.
Calculus (Stewart's Calculus Series)
by James Stewart
from Brooks Cole
Success in your calculus course starts here! James Stewart's CALCULUS texts are world-wide best-sellers for a reason: they are clear, accurate, and filled with relevant, real-world examples. With CALCULUS, Sixth Edition, Stewart conveys not only the utility of calculus to help you develop technical competence, but also gives you an appreciation for the intrinsic beauty of the subject. His patient examples and built-in learning aids will help you build your mathematical confidence and achieve your goals in the course!
Trading Chaos: Maximize Profits with Proven Technical Techniques (A Marketplace Book)
by Marketplace Books
from Wiley
How to trade the markets by integrating Chaos Theory with market sentiment
In the first edition of Trading Chaos, seasoned trader and psychologist Bill Williams detailed the potential of Chaos Theory-which seeks to make the unpredictable understandable-in trading and it revolutionized financial decision-making. The Second Edition of Trading Chaos is a cutting edge book that combines trading psychology and Chaos Theory and its particular effect on the markets. By examining both of these facets in relation to the current market, readers will have the best of all possible worlds when trading.
Bill Williams, PhD, CTA (Solana Beach, CA), is President of Profitunity.com, a leader in the field of education for traders and investors. Justine Gregory-Williams (Solana Beach, CA) is President of the Profitunity Trading Group and a full-time trader.
Fractals and Scaling In Finance
by Benoit B. Mandelbrot
from Springer
This is the first book in the Selecta, the collected works of Benoit Mandelbrot. This volume incorporates his original contributions to finance and is a major contribution to the understanding of how speculative prices vary in time. The chapters consist of much new material prepared for this volume, as well as reprints of his classic papers. Much of this work helps to lay a foundation for evaluating risks in trading strategies.
Statistical Papers, 2000: "... this is a most useful collection of Mandelbrot's work economics, it provides an excellent starting point for anybody interested in the origin of many current topics in empirical finance or the distribution of income."
The Computational Beauty of Nature: Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation
by Gary William Flake
from The MIT Press
Honorable Mention, 1998, category of Computer Science, Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Awards Competition presented by the Association of American Publishers, Inc.
In this book Gary William Flake develops in depth the simple idea that recurrent rules can produce rich and complicated behaviors. Distinguishing "agents" (e.g., molecules, cells, animals, and species) from their interactions (e.g., chemical reactions, immune system responses, sexual reproduction, and evolution), Flake argues that it is the computational properties of interactions that account for much of what we think of as "beautiful" and "interesting." From this basic thesis, Flake explores what he considers to be today's four most interesting computational topics: fractals, chaos, complex systems, and adaptation.
Each of the book's parts can be read independently, enabling even the casual reader to understand and work with the basic equations and programs. Yet the parts are bound together by the theme of the computer as a laboratory and a metaphor for understanding the universe. The inspired reader will experiment further with the ideas presented to create fractal landscapes, chaotic systems, artificial life forms, genetic algorithms, and artificial neural networks.
Fractals: The Patterns of Chaos: Discovering a New Aesthetic of Art, Science, and Nature (A Touchstone Book)
by John Briggs
from Simon & Schuster
Fractals are unique patterns left behind by the unpredictable movements -- the chaos -- of the world at work. The branching patterns of trees, the veins in a hand, water twisting out of a running tap -- all of these are fractals. Learn to recognize them and you will never again see things in quite the same way.
Fractals permeate our lives, appearing in places as tiny as the surface of a virus and as majestic as the Grand Canyon. From ancient tribal peoples to modern painters to the animators of Star Wars, artists have been captivated by fractals and have utilized them in their work. Computer buffs are wild about fractals as well, for they can be generated on ordinary home computers.
In Fractals: The Patterns of Chaos, science writer John Briggs uses over 170 illustrations to clearly explain the significance -- and more importantly, the beauty -- of fractals. He describes how fractals were discovered, how they are formed, and the unique properties different fractals share. Fractals is a breathtaking guided tour of a brand new aesthetic of art, science, and nature. It will revolutionize the way you see the world and your place within it.
* Contains a special bibliography listing fractal generating software for desktop computers
Cities and Complexity: Understanding Cities with Cellular Automata, Agent-Based Models, and Fractals
by Michael Batty
from The MIT Press
As urban planning moves from a centralized, top-down approach to a decentralized, bottom-up perspective, our conception of urban systems is changing. In Cities and Complexity, Michael Batty offers a comprehensive view of urban dynamics in the context of complexity theory, presenting models that demonstrate how complexity theory can embrace a myriad of processes and elements that combine into organic wholes. He argues that bottom-up processes—in which the outcomes are always uncertain—can combine with new forms of geometry associated with fractal patterns and chaotic dynamics to provide theories that are applicable to highly complex systems such as cities.
Batty begins with models based on cellular automata (CA), simulating urban dynamics through the local actions of automata. He then introduces agent-based models (ABM), in which agents are mobile and move between locations. These models relate to many scales, from the scale of the street to patterns and structure at the scale of the urban region. Finally, Batty develops applications of all these models to specific urban situations, discussing concepts of criticality, threshold, surprise, novelty, and phase transition in the context of spatial developments. Every theory and model presented in the book is developed through examples that range from the simplified and hypothetical to the actual. Deploying extensive visual, mathematical, and textual material, Cities and Complexity will be read both by urban researchers and by complexity theorists with an interest in new kinds of computational models.
Sample chapters and examples from the book, and other related material, can be found at http://www.complexcity.info.
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