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I went to the computer and tried to experiment. I introduced a very high level of experiment in very pure mathematics.

Benoit Mandelbrot

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Benoit Mandelbrot
Age: 85 †
Born: 1924
Born: November 20
Died: 2010
Died: October 14
Computer Scientist
Economist
Engineer
Mathematician
Professor
Scientist
Writer
Warszawa
Mandelbrot
B. B.‏
Benoît Mandelbrot
Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Computer
Level
Pure
Levels
Introduced
Went
Experiment
High
Experiments
Mathematics
Tried

More quotes by Benoit Mandelbrot

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Regular geometry, the geometry of Euclid, is concerned with shapes which are smooth, except perhaps for corners and lines, special lines which are singularities, but some shapes in nature are so complicated that they are equally complicated at the big scale and come closer and closer and they don't become any less complicated.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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The Mandelbrot set is the most complex mathematical object known to mankind.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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The straight line has a property of self-similarity. Each piece of the straight line is the same as the whole line when used to a big or small extent.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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There is a saying that every nice piece of work needs the right person in the right place at the right time.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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The most important thing I have done is to combine something esoteric with a practical issue that affects many people.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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Smooth shapes are very rare in the wild but extremely important in the ivory tower and the factory.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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There is a joke that your hammer will always find nails to hit. I find that perfectly acceptable
Benoit Mandelbrot
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In mathematics and science definition are simple, but bare-bones. Until you get to a problem which you understand it takes hundreds and hundreds of pages and years and years of learning.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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The techniques I developed for studying turbulence, like weather, also apply to the stock market
Benoit Mandelbrot
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Nobody will deny that there is at least some roughness everywhere
Benoit Mandelbrot
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Everybody in mathematics had given up for 100 years or 200 years the idea that you could from pictures, from looking at pictures, find new ideas. That was the case long ago in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, in later periods, but then mathematicians had become very abstract.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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A formula can be very simple, and create a universe of bottomless complexity.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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If one takes the kinds of risks which I took, which are colossal, but taking risks, I was rewarded by being able to contribute in a very substantial fashion to a variety of fields. I was able to reawaken and solve some very old problems.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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I had very, very little training in taking an exam to determine a scientist's life in France.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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There are very complex shapes which would be the same from close by and far away.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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If you look at a shape like a straight line, what's remarkable is that if you look at a straight line from close by, from far away, it is the same it is a straight line.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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I conceived and developed a new geometry of nature and implemented its use in a number of diverse fields. It describes many of the irregular and fragmented patterns around us, and leads to full-fledged theories, by identifying a family of shapes I call fractals.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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I spent my time very nicely in many ways, but not fully satisfactory. Then I became Professor in France, but realized that I was not - for the job that I should spend my life in.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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When the weather changes and hurricanes hit, nobody believes that the laws of physics have changed. Similarly, I don't believe that when the stock market goes into terrible gyrations its rules have changed. It's the same stock market with the same mechanisms and the same people.
Benoit Mandelbrot
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A cloud is made of billows upon billows upon billows that look like clouds. As you come closer to a cloud you don't get something smooth, but irregularities at a smaller scale.
Benoit Mandelbrot