The chaos cookbook: A practical programming guide

The subject of chaos and fractals has come into popular prominence in the last few years mainly because fractals can create stunning graphical images on computers. Indeed, many magazines have carried programs to generate what is probably the "hallmark" of the field, the Mandelbrot set. However, beyond the aesthetic pleasure of these images the science of chaos has implications for us all, in areas as diverse as next week's weather, Jupiter's famous "red spot", and heart attacks. Chaos is likely to cause as much change in the way that scientists think of the world as did the replacement of Newton's classical mechanics with the quantumn theory. Despite this, the basic principles are breathtakingly simple, and anyone with a home computer can get involved and perhaps make a contribution to this still young science.