XenoFractals

[GKStill]

Hi,

I've had the pleasure of talking about fractal applications in the financial markets with Benoit Mandelbrot and corresponding with Arthur C. Clarke on the Xenofractals. The have been sitting in my note books and computer files for nearly 20 years and been the subject of some interesting press including over 1,000,000 free disks sent out on the cover of Focus and PC World (1994)

Just upgraded the website (www.Xenofractals.com) and posted an update to the Xenofractals iPad app to Apple Store yesterday.

He to talk about how to improve, expand, discuss and generally find out more about these curious fractal systems (both iterative and recursive).

Welcome any and all discussions.

Regards,



Keith

[cKleinhuis]

helllo and welcome to the forums, from where are you from ? france ?

[GKStill]

Hi,

Thanks for the welcome

Born and bred in Scotland, now living in North West England.

Kind regards,



Keith
www.xenofractals.com

[DarkBeam]

  Welcome Sir!

[bib]

Welcome to Fractalforums! You had the chance to meet Benoit Mandelbrot himself, that was dream for many of us

[GKStill]

Met and talked to Benoit Mandlebrot - we spent a conference and a long evening (into the wee small hours) talking about the fractal nature of financial markets and he signed/inscribed his book to me (2001).

Had several conversations/faxes with Arthur C. Clarke on the nature of fractals and the work I was involved with

"More importantly, it seems to me that what you were generating is something much more impressive than Fractal Patterns. What you're really showing is views of our galaxy, in the far future when we've had time to do a little landscape gardening." Arthur C. Clarke (Nov 1994)

and, of course, my own mentor/professor was Ian Stewart....been a privilege and honour to have met and worked with the greats.

The last 20 years has kept me very focussed and busy with the development of crowd sciences though - so just getting back to working with the xenofractals - aiming to publish explorer code and perhaps a few papers on the applications.

Happy to discuss.

Keith

[bib]

Keith, I really look up to these great people. I came to read "Does God Play Dice" very recently, and I've been totally fascinated by Ian Stewart's capacity to explain chaos in simple terms. It allowed me to connect the dots with one of the iconic fractals among the new generation, the so-called Mandelbox, where two basic operations performed in the iterated fuction are stretching and folding, the basic ingredients of chaos as Ian Stewart describes them.

Great to have you among us here! Are there any connections between fractals and crowd motion?

[GKStill]

Hi,

Thanks for the welcomes. "Does God Play dice" is an excellent book - I think I'm Chapter 10 or 11 in another of Ian's books "Life's Other Secret" which describes he crowds/fractal connection.

The conference where I met, and talked through into the early hours, with Benoit Mandelbrot was all related to crowds, fractal analysis in the financial markets and the nature of information and connectivity. The Xenofractals and the notes I took during that meeting were all focussed on the "why" do the markets behave in this way - sure they are fractal - but why are they fractal.

Mostly this is due to the nature of how a group interacts ("It's all in the interactions") - you can build cellular automata models to explore the connectivity and I did a lot of work on "TradeStation" on chaos detectors ("don't trade chaos") where the crowd reactions were non coherant. When the crowd is coherent there is a degree of predictability - so a 0-1 chaos detector allowed me to discriminate between chaotic and non-chaotic signals....improved the trading performance (and I made a bit of money too).

However - crowd safety has always been my passion.

There is an article Ian wrote (for Discover Magazine) which explains the start of the journey (http://www.xenofractals.com/Cobweb.html) in his words.

Since then I've gone on to model (and design) some of the worlds largest, most dangerous and complex crowded spaces.

Right now - I'm getting back into programming the Xenofractals and if anyone out there is interested in some serious discussions - I'd love to hear from you. They were cover disc on PC World and Focus Magazine (over 1,000,000 distributed) which also featured a free book from Arthur C. Clarke - hence his letter to me and the subsequent discussion on the fracas systems.

Sadly, both Arthur and Benoit are no longer with us - so these are treasured memories and letters.

Kind regards,




Keith

[GKStill]

Just added some movie files to

www.Xenofractals.com

Would welcome any discussion.

Regards,


Keith

[lycium]

hmmm, xenofractals sounds a lot like http://www.xenodream.com/

[GKStill]

Xenodream - great website and great product.

I've nothing to do with the company - my work has been around since early 1990's (originally called Orchid Fractals - over 1,000,000 copies distributed on PC World and Focus Magazine in 1994).

Regards,


Keith

[GKStill]

Been updating websites and blogs - now have some of my work on youtube

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Uklvx806qdo&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/Uklvx806qdo&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a>

Just one example of the xenofractal (these are akin to living organisms as you can see).

Would be interested in my feedback/comments.

Kind regards,



Keith

[eiffie]

I would sure like to know more about the algorithm. Is it written up somewhere on your site?

[GKStill]

Not yet - looking for a trusted mathematician/coder to assist in development for iPad first.