Yesterday, as Casey was telling us all that of our algorithms for solving the problem of the week were wrong, he mentioned fractals. What did fractals have to do with our problem of the week? They are exactly why our algorithms DO NOT work.

A fractal, as defined by WolframMathWorld, is “an object or quantity that displays self-similarity, in a somewhat technical sense, on all scales. The object need not exhibit exactly the same structure at all scales, but the same “type” of structures must appear on all scales.” Now I know that’s über-confusing but just think about the pictures Casey drew us in class. The sine wave whose wavelength is infinitely decreasing is an example of this.

But I don’t really want to go into detail about what a fractal is. What I care about, is what fractals LOOK like. We can find fractals in nature.

Like, look, frost!

Or what about some acrylic?

Guess what else… VEGETABLES.

Hey, that’s pretty neat.

And even though this isn’t really found in nature, I’ll give you this one too, and maybe it’ll convince Mama Nature that we need some blizzarding up in hur.