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From: prem@geomag.fsu.edu (Prem Subrahmanyam)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: fractals as bad science
Message-ID: <379@fsu.scri.fsu.edu>
Date: 21 Nov 89 22:32:21 GMT
References: <19544@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <1619@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <1449@mrsvr.UUCP> <4158@celit.fps.com>
Sender: news@fsu.scri.fsu.edu
Reply-To: prem@geomag.gly.fsu.edu (Prem Subrahmanyam)
Organization: Florida State University Computing Center
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In article <4158@celit.fps.com> hutch@fps.com (Jim Hutchison) writes:
>There was a program on Chaos on a network educational TV program, in which
>they showed 2 different graphs of nerve activity in the human heart.  The
>nice ordered pattern was fibrilation (bad), the disordered (looking) model
>was a normal functioning heart.  Seems that ordered pulses are not all that

   Actually, it was the brain that followed this pattern.  The fibrillating
   heart was chaotic, with a normal heart having a normal rhythm.  The brain
   was coked up to make a repeatable "waveform", otherwise, it was intensely
   random in neural activity.  

   By the way, although fractals are a part of chaotic study, chaotic study
   is not just fractals.
   ---Prem Subrahmanyam  (prem@geomag.gly.fsu.edu)