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You have GOT to see this, then wonder .... http://www.raygirvan.co.uk/apoth/udo.htm

An excerpt:

In Salus, Udo describes how he used these numbers: "Each person's soul undergoes trials through each of the threescore years and ten of allotted life, [encompassing?] its own nature and diminished or elevated in stature by others [it] encounters, wavering between good and evil until [it is] either cast into outer darkness or drawn forever to God."

When Schipke saw the translation, at once he saw it for what it was: an allegorical description of the iterative process for calculating the Mandelbrot. In mathematical terms, Udo's system was to start with a complex number z, then iterate it up to 70 times by the rule z -> z*z + c, until z either diverged or was caught in an orbit. [*4]

------------------------------------------- In addition to Lee Skinner's:

This has been proven to be a hoax. Udo, if he existed, never saw a Mandelbrot set. Lee

------------------------------------------- I additionally located at: http://spanky.fractint.org/www/whats-new.html "Ray Girvan raygirvan@freezone.co.uk has put together a well crafted hoax and released it as an April Fools joke called THE MANDELBROT MONK." ------------------------------------------- and also from www.museumofhoaxes.com: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/forum/forum_comments/2961/ "Also from Science Daily Udo of Aachen, fictional monk (1200-1270 CE). Udo is the creation of British technical writer Ray Girvan, who invented him for an April Fool's article in 1999. Mystic and poet whose work ostensibly was set to music by Carl Orff with the haunting O Fortuna in Carmina Burana - actually the work of itinerant goliards, found in the German Benedictine monastery of Beuron (Latin, Burana). The apocryphal Udo was also an illustrator and theologian, supposedly he discovered the Mandelbrot set, some 700 years before Benoit Mandelbrot (Benoit is French for Benedict). "Re-discovered" when the also-fictional Bob Schipke, a Harvard mathematician, saw a picture of the Mandelbrot set in an illumination for a 13th century carol." " ------------------------------------------- At: http://classes.yale.edu/fractals/ Michael Frame, Benoit Mandelbrot, and Nial Neger of Yale Univ. list "Mandelbrot Monk" as topic '3I' of their collection of notes on fractals, chaos and related topics -- but without calling it a hoax. I assume that they are relying on reader's discriminating minds to deduce that it is a hoax. (I.e. -- complex numbers, iteration and Cartesian coordinates did not exist in the 13th century, during the monk's supposed 'lifetime'.) ------------------------------------------- Also, in the Number 82, August 2001 NEWSLETTER OF THE NEW ZEALAND MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY: http://www.massey.ac.nz/~wwifs/mathnews/Nzms82/news82.htm#monk Garry J. Tee says: "Some mathematical websites have provided links to Ray Girvan's article; and it has been picked up by some e-mail news service, so that excited reports of it have been passed around the Internet. Alert readers of the article will notice several hints of its nature. The end of the article clinches the matter by its date: 1999 April the first. Ray Girvan has written his witty article very skillfully, reporting some genuine facts which are strange and little-known. The list of references cites many significant papers on mathematics and on medieval science. But the basic paper, by a retired Professor of Mathematics at Harvard, does not exist." ------------------------------------------- Despite all the debunking I offer, I still recommend that you read this highly original, very creative work describing the Mandelbrot set's creation -- in medieval language -- with scholarly references! This is how the article is signed: "© Ray Girvan (ray@raygirvan.co.uk), April 1st 1999." THE MANDELBROT MONK: http://www.raygirvan.co.uk/apoth/udo.htm - Hal Lane ######################### # hallane@earthlink.net # ######################### ################################################################## -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.18/91 - Release Date: 9/6/05