What do you think?
Rate this book
Dynamical Systems and Fractals: Computer Graphics Experiments with Pascal
This study of chaos, fractals and complex dynamics is intended for anyone familiar with computers. While keeping the mathematics to a simple level with few formulas, the reader is introduced to an area of current scientific research that was scarcely possible until the availability of computers. The book is divided into two main parts; the first provides the most interesting problems, each with a solution in a computer program format. Numerous exercises enable the reader to conduct his or her own experimental work. The second part provides sample programs for specific machine and operating systems; details refer to IBM-PC with MS-DOS and Turbo-Pascal, UNIX 42BSD with Berkeley Pascal and C. Other implementations of the graphics routines are given for the Apple Macintosh, Apple IIE and IIGS and Atari ST.
- GenresMathematics
412 pages, Paperback
First published October 26, 1989
10 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 4, 2020
Dynamical Systems and Fractals, Computer Graphics Experiments in Pascal,
is a book about fractal geometry by Karl-Heinz Becker and Michael Dorfler. It was originally published in German in 1986, and the English translation — which is of course the version I read — was published in 1989.
I am giving Dynamical Systems and Fractals 4 of 5 stars because it is an excellent book, but the actual code — written in Pascal — in it is a little dated.
This is the first book I read about fractals, and I found it very interesting and informative, and even a little challenging at times. It is important to note that I am not really a "typical reader" in the broad sense of the word. This is because I have an undergraduate degree in Math/Computer Science, earned in 1986 at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA.
Although it has been over thirty years since I worked with this sort of math, I felt mostly comfortable with the math in the book. Of course I had to dig in my brain a bit to remember things like exponents and logarithms that I have not thought about since the 1980s — which is coincidentally when the book was written.
It may surprise some people to learn that — as I am learning now from more recent books on the topic — the underlying math has not changed in the least. Most people in the twenty-first century are used to technology changing very quickly, but then most people never learn anything about the underlying math that is crucial to the way technology works.
What has changed is the computers, which although they were powerful enough to enable exploring fractal geometry in the 1980s, have grown exponentially more powerful over the past few decades. Most notably, I doubt anyone uses Pascal anymore, and in that respect, the book truly is dated.
Back in my days at VCU I had the pleasure of learning Pascal — a programming language much easier to structure than COBOL, the language du jour in Richmond back then, that I worked with to make a living and pay for school. So it was a bit nostalgic to encounter their short section on structured programming towards the end of the book.
By the time I finished reading Dynamical Systems and Fractals I felt I understood the basics of fractals, but I was not entirely sure until I started reading some newer books about them. As I am learning now, while reading some of the more recent books, the Pascal programming language may be anachronistic, but the math behind fractals is as valid as ever.
I recommend Dynamical Systems and Fractals to any programmer — especially anyone who is familiar with multiple programming languages — looking to get started writing programs to create fractals. They would have to translate the Pascal into the programming language of their choice, but as someone who was a professional programmer for many years, I feel that is the easy part. Discovering the power of the math behind these shapes is definitely the hard part!
And since today's computers are so much more powerful than those in the 1980s, a programmer today should be able to use this book as just a starting point for their own explorations. The field of fractal geometry is huge, and I am sure there is plenty more to learn about it!
I am giving Dynamical Systems and Fractals 4 of 5 stars because it is an excellent book, but the actual code — written in Pascal — in it is a little dated.
This is the first book I read about fractals, and I found it very interesting and informative, and even a little challenging at times. It is important to note that I am not really a "typical reader" in the broad sense of the word. This is because I have an undergraduate degree in Math/Computer Science, earned in 1986 at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA.
Although it has been over thirty years since I worked with this sort of math, I felt mostly comfortable with the math in the book. Of course I had to dig in my brain a bit to remember things like exponents and logarithms that I have not thought about since the 1980s — which is coincidentally when the book was written.
It may surprise some people to learn that — as I am learning now from more recent books on the topic — the underlying math has not changed in the least. Most people in the twenty-first century are used to technology changing very quickly, but then most people never learn anything about the underlying math that is crucial to the way technology works.
What has changed is the computers, which although they were powerful enough to enable exploring fractal geometry in the 1980s, have grown exponentially more powerful over the past few decades. Most notably, I doubt anyone uses Pascal anymore, and in that respect, the book truly is dated.
Back in my days at VCU I had the pleasure of learning Pascal — a programming language much easier to structure than COBOL, the language du jour in Richmond back then, that I worked with to make a living and pay for school. So it was a bit nostalgic to encounter their short section on structured programming towards the end of the book.
By the time I finished reading Dynamical Systems and Fractals I felt I understood the basics of fractals, but I was not entirely sure until I started reading some newer books about them. As I am learning now, while reading some of the more recent books, the Pascal programming language may be anachronistic, but the math behind fractals is as valid as ever.
I recommend Dynamical Systems and Fractals to any programmer — especially anyone who is familiar with multiple programming languages — looking to get started writing programs to create fractals. They would have to translate the Pascal into the programming language of their choice, but as someone who was a professional programmer for many years, I feel that is the easy part. Discovering the power of the math behind these shapes is definitely the hard part!
And since today's computers are so much more powerful than those in the 1980s, a programmer today should be able to use this book as just a starting point for their own explorations. The field of fractal geometry is huge, and I am sure there is plenty more to learn about it!
January 31, 2013
This book is very dated, though it still may be of some interest to someone fascinated by fractals. It is mainly of historical interest unless there is a newer edition. The code examples are retro pascal.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews