The 2001 Winter Term home page for this course is located here.
The 2002 Winter Term home page for this course is located here.
This course presents an elementary introduction to chaos and fractals.
Through the study of discrete dynamical system, students will
encounter examples of deterministic chaos and fractals---specifically
the Mandelbrot set and Julia sets. You've probably seen the
Mandelbrot set and various Julia sets before; they're the pretty,
multicolored fractals that are on many book covers and posters and
calendars.
This class is for students who have had algebra and probably algebra II in high school. It is not a remedial math course, but is intended to give students significant practice in high school algebra while providing an exposure to some recent advances in dynamical systems and fractals. Along the way, we will likely encounter complex ("imaginary") numbers and some ideas from elementary probability and statistics. This course is not a systematic review of algebra. Students needing such a review are strongly encouraged to take College Algebra .
The text for this course will probably be Chaos, Fractals and Dynamics: Computer Experiments in Mathematics, by Bob Devaney. We may also use portions of Fractals and Chaos Simplified for the Life Sciences, by Larry Lebovitch, and Chaos, by James Gleick.
Evaluation will be based on class participation, weekly problem sets and possibly one or more take home exams. Some computer work will be required, but no computer experience is necessary.
Prerequisites: High school algebra. Introductory. QR.
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