The fractals are such a beautiful recognition and I cannot wait to see where it takes us.

Rudy Rucker's fractal advice

Eric

Didn't we do the analysis of pattern recognition as a theme once before - a couple of years ago? The thread was: "why pattern recognition?" .... or was it something else?

quote:

Originally posted by Eric:

quote:

`No. I saw her death coming. In the patterns you sometimes imagined you could detect in the dance of the street. Those patterns are real. I am complex enough, in my narrow ways, to read those dances. Far better than Wintermute can. I saw her death in her need for you, in the magnetic code of the lock on the door of your coffin in Cheap Hotel, in Julie Deane's account with a Hongkong shirtmaker. As clear to me as the shadow of a tumor to a surgeon studying a patient's scan. When she took your Hitachi to her boy, to try to access it -- she had no idea what it carried, still less how she might sell it, and her deepest wish was that you would pursue and punish her -- I intervened. My methods are far more subtle than Wintermute's. I brought her here. Into myself.'

It was the Brazilian Neuromancer. But I agree, it is relevant.

Is this the thread, Moonage?

quote:

Originally posted by Prism:
Seems like phi (1.618) is a ratio that is embedded in the fabric of life. Plato's perfect rectangle exemplifies that ratio and the spirals related to it are apparent in some sea shells and in the patterns of seeds in the head of a sunflower.

In terms of pattern recognition, what intrigues me is that the human eye finds that proportion pleasing. Is this a pattern that we are drawn to by virtue of it being watermarked in the way things are alive on this planet?

Indeed, the golden ratio is one of the beautiful patterns we see in our world, and it's one that isn't too difficult for most folks to wrap their brains around. But I've been doing some loose research over the past few years on other trancendental numbers. These are the patterns that take a bit more searching to find but detecting subtle patterns is so much more satisfying.

Pi is the king of the trancendentals- pi is essential in mathematically expressing circles and circles are pretty common in our day to day life. But, if you were to put the digits of pi in ASCII, the filesize would be, in effect, infinate. So, there is something we seem incapable of comprehending in the simplicity of of a wheel. Or a donut. Or a ball. Or a planetary orbit.

You can find any seven-digit integer somewhere in the first million digits of pi. We don't really know where it stops.

(Riemann's zeta function goes a step further, in terms of patterns, randomness and prime number theory, but I'm just starting to get the skillz to really noodle around with it. A whole other level of complexity.)

The notes on transcendentals bring to mind some snippets of poetry which express my choice of virtual handle.

My mind,
Like a prism,
Gathers up
The white light of experience
And breaks it up
Into a spectrum
Of comprehension;
A barcode,
As unique as a fingerprint,
As breathtaking as the rainbow.

And I wonder:
Is God ultraviolet?
Infrared?
Or does He
The favoured Son,
Clothe Himself
In the rainbow glory
That stoops
To greet us
Through the fractured
And pitted glass
Of the human senses?

The images draw on the Christian notion of the incarnation, but I see this as another of tools for talking about "living on the isthmus of a middle state/ A being both darkly wise and rudely great"(Pope) - our seeming incapability of comprehending the simplicity of a wheel. I agree that there is a fierce beauty in patterns. I chose the word "stoops" because it conjures up for me the powerful descent of a falcon rather than condescension.

Having ready up a bit on Rhiehmann Zeta Function, I'm realizing just how hard it is to generate a truly random number.

The patterns that we think we see - and can prove, empiricly - may be no more than the system the local wino uses to pick lottery numbers.

From the wino's perspective, a system's success is proof of its validity. That may be true of any pattern, model or system we use. Germ theory, for example, allows us to do a lot by way of disease control, but is it valid in the sense that it will not be superceded by a more powerful description in another context? Probably not, but it allows us a measure of control in our world.