Synopses & Reviews
This first volume of strategic activities is designed to develop through a hands-on approach, a basic mathematical understanding and appreciation of fractals. The concepts presented on fractals include self-similarity, the chaos game, and complexity as it relates to fractal dimension. These strategic activities have been developed from a sound instructional base, stressing the connections to the contemporary curriculums recommended in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics. Where appropriate the activities take advantage of the technological power of the graphics calculator. These activites make excellent extensions to many of the topics that are already taught in the current curriculum. Together, they can be used as a complete unit or as the beginning for a semester course on fractals.
Synopsis
There are many reasons for writing this first volume of strategic activities on fractals. The most pervasive is the compelling desire to provide students of mathematics with a set of accessible, hands-on experiences with fractals and their underlying mathematical principles and characteristics. Another is to show how fractals connect to many different aspects of mathematics and how the study of fractals can bring these ideas together. A third is to share the beauty of their structure and shape both through what the eye sees and what the mind visualizes. Fractals have captured the attention, enthusiasm, and interest of many people around the world. To the casual observer, their color, beauty, and geometric structure captivates the visual senses like few other things they have ever experienced in mathematics. To the computer scientist, fractals offer a rich environment in which to explore, create, and build a new visual world as an artist creating a new work. To the student, fractals bring mathematics out of past history and into the twenty-first century. To the mathematics teacher, fractals offer a unique, new opportunity to illustrate both the dynamics of mathematics and its many connecting links.