{"id":1247,"date":"2010-10-16T12:59:25","date_gmt":"2010-10-16T16:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/?p=1247"},"modified":"2010-10-16T12:59:25","modified_gmt":"2010-10-16T16:59:25","slug":"death-of-benoit-mandelbrot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/10\/16\/death-of-benoit-mandelbrot\/","title":{"rendered":"Death of Benoit Mandelbrot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;\" title=\"Mandelbrot\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pnl.gov\/breakthroughs\/issues\/2006-issues\/summer\/images\/mandelbrot_fractals.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"208\" height=\"288\" \/>The mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot has<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/10\/17\/us\/17mandelbrot.html?emc=eta1\"> passed away at the age of 85<\/a>.  Mandelbrot made a career in defining and studying <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fractal\">fractals<\/a>, geometric shapes that do not lose complexity as you zoom in on them.  Things like coastlines are fractals:  as you zoom in on a coastline, smaller and smaller inlets and other curves appear.<\/p>\n<p>For me, my introduction to this area was by my advisor John Bartholidi who used <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Space-filling_curve\">space filling curves<\/a>, a type of fractal, <a href=\"http:\/\/www2.isye.gatech.edu\/~jjb\/mow\/mow.html\">to schedule Atlanta&#8217;s Meals on Wheels<\/a> (free lunches for the elderly), of all things.  At that time, I bulled my way through the fractal literature, always hoping to find some more examples of how fractals could be used in operations research.  Unfortunately, I don&#8217;t know of other good examples of fractals in operations research.  But I have found knowing about fractals to be helpful in my everyday life.  Once you start looking for fractals and self-similar objects, they are all around and seeing them makes experiences richer.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone know other examples of how fractals have been used in operations research?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot has passed away at the age of 85. Mandelbrot made a career in defining and studying fractals, geometric shapes that do not lose complexity as you zoom in on them. Things like coastlines are fractals: as you zoom in on a coastline, smaller and smaller inlets and other curves appear. For &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2010\/10\/16\/death-of-benoit-mandelbrot\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Death of Benoit Mandelbrot&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obituary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}