Arrival and Exodus is Fractal

[jeremedia]

The same at all scales.

[GreyCoyote]

Complete gibberish. Nothing about that is a fractal.

[jeremedia]

One of the attributes of fractals is that their details appear similar at any scale. While looking at the population curve of my camp I noticed you could "see" the event's exodus in our tiny population. Kind of a stretch, but not gibberish.

[trilobyte]

I'm giving this a nudge over to the transportation board, since that's a better fit for discussions about arrival and exodus.

I think calling it a fractal is a bit of a stretch, while you've got a fancy chart of your camp's population, it hardly scales to any camp - or even the whole event. It's an interesting theory though.

[jeremedia]

I'd be surprised if the whole event's population curve wasn't close to this small sample. What makes you think otherwise?

[GreyCoyote]

One of the attributes of fractals is that their details appear similar at any scale. While looking at the population curve of my camp I noticed you could "see" the event's exodus in our tiny population. Kind of a stretch, but not gibberish.

I see how you derived your analogy, but that isn't a fractal.

The observation that the instantaneous population of your camp somehow tracks the instantaneous population of BRC overall would be completely expected. After all, your camp is a representative part of the whole of BRC, obeys the same "laws", and thus should behave symmetrically to the greater whole. But this isn't a fractal series. Instead this would be a fractional series: "part of the whole". Fractals are self-similar, meaning they relate to themselves only, and not to any external series. They are not part of anything. They are complete within themselves. Fractions relate to the overall whole.

[burner von braun]

*fighting sudden urge to go out and buy VW Beetle*

[GreyCoyote]

BVB: Just wait until I get out my Kaypro II and fire-up Conway's "Game of Life". It'll be Bong-Time with Captain & Tennille for sure.