Week 7 - Fractals as patterns of complex systems

Fractals are never-ending patterns formed by repetition - be it repetition of a process, a formula, or a shape... Fractals represent dynamic systems and show where and how small shifts can have big effects down the road in a feedback-driven system. Fractals frequently occur in nature - the branching of an oak tree, for example, or in the body, as with the branching of the bronchi in the lungs.

One might even consider that the paths of our lives and could also be visually represented by fractals. While procrastinating writing this, I randomly (“randomly”) clicked on a link from the Brain Pickings blog to hear Amanda Palmer read the poem by Wislawa Szymborska, a Polish Nobel laureate. The description, on Brain Pickings, fit right in with this theme (http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/07/02/amanda-palmer-reads-wislawa-szymborska/?mc_cid=2e1e781938&mc_eid=b96d4cf73a ):

“Amanda has previously lent her beautiful voice to my favorite Szymborska poem, “Possibilities,” and she now lends it to another favorite from this final volume, “Life While-You-Wait” — a bittersweet ode to life’s string of unrepeatable moments, each the final point in a fractal decision tree of what-ifs that add up to our destiny, and a gentle invitation to soften the edges of the heart as we meet ourselves along the continuum of our becoming.”

I've seen fractals described as "the pictures of chaos". Perhaps we, too, could be described as such.