Roshar Map Mystery Solved

[Geoff]

The 17th Shard forum has figured out where the map of Roshar came from. Brandon, at a Q&A, said that the map was designed from something very specific.

Apparently that is the Julia set, a complex math function.

Julia set vs Roshar

The 'sandy' image on the left is a 2d representation of a 3d slice of a 4d Julia set function. Amazing. On the Julia Set wiki page there is an animation that produces that image.

I immediately wonder if that animation perhaps foreshadows the future of Roshar.

[Dara]

I will have to as my boyfriend to help me out with this. Math isn't my forte. He's an engineer and loves fractals and the Julia Set looks like a fractal to me.

[Geoff]

Dara wrote: "Julia Set looks like a fractal to me."

That's exactly what it is

[Rob, Mayor of Ghost Town]

I used to be good at/like math, but now I just write code which is mostly just logic based at this point.

I'd probably to have to brush up on that stuff to better understand it, which is entirely too much work at this point. lol.

[Geoff]

Alex wrote: "Do you think it means anything story-wise or is it just a random thing he based it off of?"

I can't imagine its only a random thing. It has to mean something.

I didn't read the whole thread at the 17th shard forum but some people were talking about a connection to the Everstorm. I'm not sure how that would work but its as good of an idea as any.

[[deleted user]]

Given how Sanderson goes about writing his books and planning his series, this thing's definitely going to come into play at some point, no doubt about it.

[TS]

Just read the first para from the Julia set wiki page.

"In the context of complex dynamics, a topic of mathematics, the Julia set and the Fatou set are two complementary sets (Julia 'laces' and Fatou 'dusts') defined from a function. Informally, the Fatou set of the function consists of values with the property that all nearby values behave similarly under repeated iteration of the function, and the Julia set consists of values such that an arbitrarily small perturbation can cause drastic changes in the sequence of iterated function values. Thus the behavior of the function on the Fatou set is 'regular', while on the Julia set its behavior is 'chaotic'."

It does seem to have connection with the Highstorms and Everstorms.