Lecture 24 - Tue 2023 12 05 Fractals, transversal structure of Rossler. % =============================================================================== % % ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- % FRACTALS. Finish material in Lecture 23; review notion of dimension and introduce the pointwise and correlation dimension. In pointwise: N(epsilon) = number of points in ball of radius epsilon centered at some point. Then N ~ epsilon^d Make drawing of the typical log(N) versus log(epsilon) plot one gets "in practice". The difficulty in measuring d accurately. % % ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- % REVIEW OF DIMENSION Self-similar: split fractal in pieces of size r, reproducing the whole fractal. Let N = N(r) the number of pieces. The self-similar dimension follows from the scaling N ~ r^{-d} i.e.: d = - lim_{r \to 0} log(N)/log(r). Note: self-similar rationals in [0 1] is 1. Do a Sierpinski gasket example. Box-dimension: Cover the fractal with balls [or intervals/squares/cubes or ... boxes] of size r. Let N=N(r) be the minimum number of boxes needed. Then, again, N ~ r^{-d}, so that d = - lim_{r \to 0} log(N)/log(r). Note: self-similar rationals in [0 1] is 1. Do a non-self-similar Sierpinski gasket example. Hausdorff dimension: Will not define it, a bit messy. But also based on coverings by boxes, except that the boxes need not be all the same size; but their max. size goes to zero. Note: Hausdorff rationals in [0 1] is 0! Reason: can enumerate them, say {x_n}_0^infty. Then cover each x_n with an interval of length epsilon^n. Then total length of covering epsilon/1-epsilon can be made to vanish. Point-wise dimension: Start with attractor in the form of a sequence [this notion is special for dynamical systems]. Then take a point in the attractor and count how many points in the sequence fit within a ball of radius epsilon: N = N(epsilon). Then, again, N ~ epsilon^{d}. Can measure by graphing log(N). Explain problems that arise because {x_n} is finite. Need enough points to have a "clear" straight line piece in the plot. Do drawing obtained "in practice". The difficulty in measuring d accurately. Correlation dimension: take average of point-wise dimension over attractor. Lyapunov dimension: based on the idea that the rates of contraction/expansion determine a dimension. and many more! There are many notions of dimension, and they do not all give the same number! In addition, often papers are not entirely clear as to what the parameters in the equation used where, exactly [e.g.: information displayed elsewhere in the paper, not where the dimension is reported]. The worse part is, of course, that the physical/biological/whatever meaning (and usefulness) of any dimension extracted from a natural process is often unclear: "what does it mean and what do we do with it?" In addition: are there other quantities that one can measure from a fractal? Things that may have an answer to "what does it mean and what do we do with it?" % % ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- % % % =============================================================================== EOF