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The Butterfly Effect

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John9362:
Great post Joe...

Meteorologists began talking about something they called the Butterfly Effect. The idea was that if a butterfly chances to flap his wings in Beijing in March, then, by August, hurricane patterns in the Atlantic will be completely different.

WOW !! Since a butterfly's flap of a wing can do that.....I've decided to cut back on my baked bean consumption....I DO NOT WANT TO BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR A TSUNAMI  :o :-\

Love you guys !!
John9362

hebrewroots98:
Joe, you are brilliant; you should get the award for bringing us the most brilliant analogies .  Thanks for the great info.

hillsbororiver:
Hi ciy, feat, Iris, John & Susan (you are wayyyyyyyy too kind Susan!)

Thank you all for your comments, I love how the things that science once thought were simple turn out to be real complex the closer you observe, research and study them.

Here is an example posed by the Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot in regard to something we would think to have a relatively easy and very definitive answer;


HOW LONG IS THE COAST?

A long, long time ago, fractal god Benoit Mandelbrot posed a simple question: How long is the coastline of Britain? His mathematical colleagues were miffed, to say the least, at such an annoying waste of their time on such insignifigant problems. They told him to look it up.

Of course, Madelbrot had a reason for his peculiar question. Quite an interesting reason. Look up the coastline of Britain yourself, in some encyclopedia. Whatever figure you get, it is wrong. Quite simply, the coastline of Britain is infinite.

You protest that this is impossible. Well, consider this. Consider looking at Britain on a very large-scale map. Draw the simplest two-dimensional shape possible, a triangle, which circumscribes Britain as closely as possible. The perimeter of this shape approximates the perimeter of Britain.

However, this area is of course highly inaccurate. Increasing the amount of vertices of the shape going around the coastline, and the area will become closer. The more vertices there are, the closer the circumscribing line will be able to conform to the dips and the protrusions of Britain's rugged coast.

There is one problem, however. Each time the number of vertices increases, the perimeter increases. It must increase, because of the triangle inequality. Moreover, the number of vertices never reaches a maximum. There is no point at which one can say that a shape defines the coastline of Britain. After all, exactly circumscribing the coast of Britain would entail encircling every rock, every tide pool, every pebble which happens to lie on the edge of Britain.

Thus, the coastline of Britian is infinite.

His Peace to you,

Joe

hebrewroots98:
JOE, I WILL TAKE YOUR WORD FOR THAT ABOUT BRITTIAN'S COASTLINE, JOE :D

JOHN....NOW THAT WAS HILLARIOIUS; I ALMOST CHOKED FROM LAUGHING SO HARD...(STOP, MY SIDE HURTS FROM LAUGHING SO HARD ;);D

cjwood:

--- Quote from: John9362 on July 28, 2007, 11:33:18 PM ---Great post Joe...

Meteorologists began talking about something they called the Butterfly Effect. The idea was that if a butterfly chances to flap his wings in Beijing in March, then, by August, hurricane patterns in the Atlantic will be completely different.

WOW !! Since a butterfly's flap of a wing can do that.....I've decided to cut back on my baked bean consumption....I DO NOT WANT TO BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR A TSUNAMI  :o :-\

Love you guys !!
John9362

--- End quote ---

now that is too funny.  i loved your reply.
claudia

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