Fractals in Clojure: Buddhabrot Fractal

nakkaya.com

49 points·llambda··8 comments

If I recall correctly (it's been a while), the normal Mandelbrot works by treating each pixel as a complex number and seeing if it escapes to infinity or not when iterated through some formula... the Buddhabrot however plots which values are landed on as numbers are iterated...

An interesting alternative I tried some years ago is to draw lines for each iteration instead, between where it started and where it ends, leading to the following result:

http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/583/pathsoftravel5.png

(I have some C code lying around if anyone's interested.)

Very interesting. Are you into chaos theory? Some day I would like to investigate if behavior on HN, say average score on the front page over time, lies on a strange attractor or not.

Haha... best thing is the name.. "Buddhabrot".. Still laughing!

To explain: "Butterbrot" is german for a slice of bread with butter.. spelling is nearly the same as "buddhabrot"

I think you mean the pronunciation; it is basically the same as how some Germans say it (or sometimes? actually I don't know whether it's regionally or what, as I'm from Switzerland where you don't hear it pronounced that way).

Uhm, yes, pronounciation of course

Is anyone else seeing an image of fractal on that page? I don't see one.

No matter how many times I see fractals visualized, they never cease to amaze me.

Jonathan Coulton said it best: "Infinite complexity can be described by simple rules."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com