Unexpectedly, the length of a country’s coastline depends on your ruler. As the measuring stick gets shorter (left to right), it can better fit within Great Britain’s nooks and crannies. The shorter ...

Here’s a fun project that my friend Upasana and I put together some weekends ago. It’s a visual exploration of fractals through dance, a piece of generative art that’s part performance and part ...

As a mathematical concept, the fractal can be intimidating. Benoit Mandelbrot, the Polish-born mathematician who coined the term, defined a fractal as “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can ...

And these have smaller still to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum. —Jonathan Swift, from "On Poetry: A Rhapsody" The satirist and author of Gulliver's Travels might have been talking about ...

What makes a tree a tree? Or rather, why can we recognize trees in even quite abstract depictions when they are so varied in nature? Researchers have found a clue in the branches, and used math to ...

We’re finding infinitely complex, self-similar shapes all over creation. And we’re just getting started. The world is full of beautiful geometry. It’s something we start teaching our youngest children ...

Fractals, self-replicating patterns seen at varying scales, are a fascinating phenomena found widely in nature, from snowflakes to ferns and coastlines. But did you know that fractals can also be used ...