How Mandelbrot has changed the way we see the world on a basic level

From: Roger Bagula (rlbagulatftn_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 02/23/05 

Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 15:38:23 GMT

I wrote this message to a friend this morning
and I thought that the whole community might benefit by this :

I just had a long discussion in one of my egroups about
the use of "fractal" or "chaotic" statistics as opposed to
traditional Gaussian based statistics ( an old and well codified,
some might say ossified area of study). You have to be familiar with
Mandelbrot, Falconer and Per Bak to understand the point of this discussion.
In the 1940's theories of Markets and things like the occurrence of wars
and earthquakes
were analyzed using a "traditional" Gaussian approach ( one kind of
randomness fits all).
The current theories are "extensions" not "replacements" to the older 1/f^2
alone ideas that predate Mandelbrot.
The basic point is that in many sciences the older doctrines are still
very much taught and mention of the fractal approach is at most a minimum.
So people like those in actuarial Mathematics are using tools that are
more than 40 years out of date
that were programmed yesterday. Since peoples lives may depend on
accurate statistical
analysis, this becomes an important issue in the modern world of
Mathematics.
This subject may be one that a programmers and scientists like you
who understands fractals and chaos might profit from.
A line of software that attacks the use of Lyapunov exponents,
correlation dimension and average entropy would definitely have a market
from my newsgroups and egroup experience.
Roger L. Bagula email: rlbagula@sbcglobal.net or rlbagulatftn@yahoo.com

11759 Waterhill Road,
Lakeside, Ca. 92040 telephone: 619-561-0814}

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