# [Preface] ## Obscure Hobbies Do you have a really obscure interest that, for whatever reason, lights a fire in you to learn more? Ever experienced the fustration of rarely being able to have a meaningful discussion about your biggest interest, because your friends and family have no clue what you're talking about? For whatever reason, fractals are that interest to me at the moment. I fell in love with them the day I saw em'. ## Powerful Ideas Certain ideas can change how you see the world in day to day life. When one really understands the key ideas of thermal dynamics, a cup of hot coffee no longer is just a cup of coffee. It becomes a collection of a billion billion little balls/atoms & molecules colliding with each other a billion billion times a second, much like billiard balls on a pool table but in a 3 dimensional soup. When one understands the key concepts of fractals, similar transformations in understanding arise. Every fractal is both like an art piece for the eyes to feast on, and an intellectual rabbit hole of unexpected connections between abstractions of mathematical ideas and physical processes of reality. The philosophical implications of those connections are greatest part of the venture to those who genuinely enjoy learning about the world. ##Good Explainations Are Hard To Come By Learning about this stuff is mind opening once you really understand what is being talked about. The problem is, I have rarely found good explainations for the common lay person to easily digest. A lot of profound concepts get lost in translation, buried deep under a mound of overly technical jargon. A lot of advanced ideas live almost solely in hard to parse academic papers whos main viewership is academic students & professionals. Sometimes, it can almost feel like academic gatekeeping. All this is to say, the ability to distill the essence of an idea and convey it in a way that anyone can understand is a skill in its own right. It requires not only a satisfactory understanding of the concepts, but also a way to build up key ideas through common language. The process takes time, effort, and an understanding of how to effectively explain things to the common people from the ground up. In other words, a tall order. Still, thats what I would like to attempt to do here. I feel like I am in a unique position as a common person with just enough interest in math and science to get the gist of the concepts. I want to make is so as many people can also get the ideas which interest me. => ./ Back To Fractal Compendium Home