Re: Publish article on fractal plots of financial function

Douglas Wm. Smith wrote:

Hi, I've written an article about a method I developed for generating
fractal plots of solutions of a certain financial function. I did it
for the
challenge and am very sure it has no financial or commercial
application,
and that the mathematics - although innovatively applied - are also not
innovations in themselves. Nevertheless, the method creates fractals
with
very interesting features using financial data, and either financial or
fractal enthusiasts would enjoy learning about it. Any suggestions
about
journals that might be interested in publishing the article would be
welcome!

Thanks,

Douglas Smith (douglaswilliamsmith@xxxxxxxxx)



This example of Rec from the web page ( as a doc file)shows that the publisher isn't very
"fractal friendly":
http://members.aol.com/DrMWEcker/REC117Short.doc
.... from my personal experience where he sent a letter of mine torn up
and called me "crazy" should give you warning of what and how you send it!
The more formal the better...Dr. Ecker is somewhat eccentric in his views
and has a long running feud with people he says stole his work.


Review of Underwood Dudley's Gem, "Mathematical Cranks"

Personal Introduction: In the last year alone, I've been in contact with at least four cranks. I'm still hearing from an otherwise knowledgeable amateur who lists himself as a zoology lecturer in India. I don't know how he got a hold of me at my home address, but Jaya S. Reddy somehow found me and claims that the value we use for _ is wrong, and that he's found ways to square the circle. Hence, either the classical knowledge can be overlooked, or it is just wrong, according to him, so one can supposedly use just straightedge and compass to construct a square with area exactly equal to that of a given circle. With increasing frequency Jaya still writes me – first doing so at my home, but now writing me a few times per month at my university address. He is always polite, unlike many cranks, and so the experience could be worse. But that is not to say that he responds well to my showing the error in his "proofs" or constructions. In fact, he has not responded at all to them.

I had also been in contact with a young man in Montreal who believes, among other extraordinary things (including incomprehensible things filling dozens of handwritten pages on his Web site), that 2 is not a prime, and moreover, that there are only three primes: 3, 5, and 7. My attempts at pointing out that he was misusing the word "prime" did not deter him, nor in subsequent emails could he even tell me what "prime" meant. Of course, this did not stop him from continuing to use a word whose meaning he admitted not knowing. When I did tell him, I asked how one would factor 2 in a manner other than 1 x 2. (It did no good that I pretended to be "stumped"!)

Then there is a real kook, James S. Harris, who for years has been claiming in his error-laden posts on sci.math to have a short, better proof of Fermat's Last Theorem (FLT) – the one that says that no equation of the form with has positive-integer solutions . If you write him to suggest calmly how to write in such a way as to be taken seriously, he will tell you not to write him again – which is not unusual for a crank. However, this is probably not much worse than "Archimedes Plutonium" on the same sci.math newsgroup, who has collected a Nixon-style enemies list of over a thousand mathematicians – and yes, I'm on it, too.

And though he was not a mathematical crank, a fellow in Australia was a scientific crank in claiming that you can reverse recorded speech to get the "real messages" in conversation. (I am also a skeptic in my personal life, and that attitude occasionally intersects the mindset needed in dealing with crankery.)

Mathematical Cranks – The Book Itself

Mathematical cranks are both disturbing and fascinating. What surprised me is how readable Dr. Dudley's book is.

I have at least a dozen books in my apartment with bookmarks in them. Not that they're uninteresting, but I get easily distracted or pulled in other directions. Not so with "Mathematical Cranks"! ("Mathematical Cranks", by Underwood Dudley, is published by the Mathematical Association of America, Washington, D.C., © 1992. $33.95 list, $25.50 for MAA members. http://www.maa.org)

The term "mathematical crank" is a general description of a certain breed of mathematical amateur. To be fair and to be sure, a mathematical crank usually knows considerably more mathematics than the average person, and, almost by definition, has far more interest in math than the average person. What separates cranks from other people, however, is a fascinating combination of mathematical and psychological traits, and Woody has nailed them in his book. These include the use of non-standard terminology and definitions, incoherent writings,
unwillingness to have work peer-reviewed or submitted for publication in refereed journals, extreme paranoia about imagined enemies, and equally extreme megalomania about the importance of one's work as well as the pursuit of riches for imagined mathematical discoveries. However, as Woody points out: "There is no money to be made in mathematics…" other than any increase in salary resulting from any promotion following publications.

Beyond that, the author teaches lots of neat math as well, such as the paradox on the previous page as a successor to the more staid and tired Zeno's paradoxes. However, there is much more, and all basics are explained, such as FLT, the three classical impossible problems of antiquity, and others. Chapters and topics appear alphabetically, and the book is arranged so that chapters need not be read in order, although I did. Most cranks are identified only by initials, although some details at the back of the book provide further information.

I found only two minor typos, and the book is out of date only in that it was released 1992, one year before Princeton professor Dr. Andrew Wiles announced proof of FLT. Hence, Dr. Dudley's references to FLT being unproven are no longer valid. However, the same is true of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which had an episode in which FLT is cited as unproven after 700+ years. However, I did not stop loving that series, nor this book, for this failure to anticipate Wiles. This book, still available from the MAA in soft cover, is an excellent work with real math written in a very understandable style. It has a compassionate tone and lots of practical advice
.