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Title: Introducing Fractal Geometry by Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon, Will Rood, Ralph Edney, Richard Appignanesi, William B. Rood ISBN: 1-84046-123-3 Publisher: Totem Books Pub. Date: 15 January, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (3 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Glitzy graphics, Disappointing text, Broad coverage
Comment: Was this a Power Point presentation... gone missing?
First, it's important to realize that this book is part of a series of "Introducing..." books from a UK publisher. So good authors were probably forced to follow a bad format.
That format apparently required glitzy graphics which overpowered the book. Each small page seemed to be on a separate topic... much like a Power Point slide presentation.
There was disappointingly little coverage of the math side of the material. OK, there really was next to none. The saving grace was the coverage of where fractals were being used in practical applications.
Let me tell you a little more on these graphics. They were (professionally done) hand drawn cartoons. Mostly of famous mathematicians having quirky things to say about the subject, on an 8th grade level.
Overall, I think the authors did a fair job of trying to jamb an excellent subject into a stupid book format. The problem lies most likely at the feet of the publisher. This format makes sense for some of their other 8th grade books: "Introducing Feminism"... Freud... Jung... Marx... Einstein, etc. How they were able to pull off "Introducing Math" in one of these small books is probably a story in and of itself. They even have an "Introducing a Post-Feminism" book, if the first one was not enough.
This book was not a complete zero for me, as I did learn many new things. It was a fast read, but I think I have yet to find the best introductory book on Fractals. If you buy this book, you'll never have to pick up a pencil and solve a problem, or even use a calculator. It's just all... a quick read.
John Dunbar
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent and fun introduction to Fractals
Comment: Discovered this book serendipitously- It's easy to read, and the witty illustrations pull you right into it. It's a good book because, while it follows a logical sequence of explanation of fractals, it can also be opened almost anywhere and "read in". I will pass this book on, both to adults and young people I know, and they will get a great introduction to fractals!
Rating: 4
Summary: A non-technical look at fractals and why we should care
Comment: This book was very interesting. It takes a look at fractals and their basic geometric properties and gives a fairly extensive history from their discovery to their current use today. This book is not technical at all and could be read by almost anyone. The best part about this book is that it offers numerous reasons for why we should care about fractals in the first place. It offers an argument that nature is naturally based on fractals and that an understanding of fractals is essential to understanding nature. The book has a comic on just about every page making it an enjoyable and quick read.
Some of the not-so-great aspects of the book are that it is almost too short, not quite technical enough, and has grammatical errors all over the place. I read this book in one sitting and it left me wanting to know more. It makes up for this, however, by listing several books about fractals and chaos theory for you to move on to after reading this book as well as telling you the level of expertise one would need to read these other books. The grammatical errors in the book are numerous. It makes me believe that no one proof read this book before it was published.
Overall, this is a great book to start learning about fractals with. If you are a math whiz, then perhaps you might want to look elsewhere for a more formal introduction to the mathematical properties of fractals, but for the layman, this book is great.
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Title: The Fractal Geometry of Nature by Benoit B. Mandelbrot ISBN: 0716711869 Publisher: W H Freeman & Co. Pub. Date: 15 August, 1982 List Price(USD): $42.50 |
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Title: Fractals by John Briggs ISBN: 0671742175 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1992 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Introducing Chaos by Ziauddin Sardar, Iwona Abrams, Iwona Abrahms ISBN: 1840460784 Publisher: Totem Books Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Introducing Mathematics by Ziauddin Sardar, Jerry Ravetz, Borin Van Loon, Richard Appignanesi, Ziaddin Sardar, Borin Van Loon, Oscar Zarate ISBN: 1840460113 Publisher: Totem Books Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Introducing Relativity by Bruce Bassett, Ralph Edney, Richard Appignanesi ISBN: 1840463724 Publisher: Totem Books Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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