For almost 10 years, chaos and fractals have been riding a wave that has enveloped many areas of mathematics and the natural sciences in its power, creativity, and expanse, and has captured the attention and enthusiasm of a worldwide lay audience. The 14 chapters of the book cover the central ideas and concepts of chaos and fractals as well as many related topics, including the Mandelbrot set, Julia sets, cellular automata, l-systems, percolation and strange attractors. Each chapter is closed by a Program of the Chapter which provides computer code for a central experiment. Two appendices complement the book: the first, by Yuval Fisher, discusses the details and ideas of fractal image compression; the second, by Carl J.G. Evertsz and Benoit Mandelbrot, introduces the foundations and implications of multifractals. Includes 24 pages of color plates. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or. Read Less