Mandelbrot Set by Jonathan Coulton at PAX 2007

Live song by Jonathan Coulton at the PAX convention in Seattle, WA.

== Lyrics ==
Pathological monsters! cried the terrified mathematician
Every one of them is a splinter in my eye
I hate the Peano Space and the Koch Curve
I fear the Cantor Ternary Set
And the Sierpinski Gasket makes me want to cry
And a million miles away a butterfly flapped its wings
On a cold November day a man named Benoit Mandelbrot was born

His disdain for pure mathematics and his unique geometrical insights
Left him well equipped to face those demons down
He saw that infinite complexity could be described by simple rules
He used his giant brain to turn the game around
And he looked below the storm and saw a vision in his head
A bulbous pointy form
He picked his pencil up and he wrote his secret down

Take a point called Z in the complex plane
Let Z1 be Z squared plus C
And Z2 is Z1 squared plus C
And Z3 is Z2 squared plus C and so on
If the series of Z's should always stay
Close to Z and never trend away
That point is in the Mandelbrot Set

Mandelbrot Set you're a Rorschach Test on fire
You're a day-glo pterodactyl
You're a heart-shaped box of springs and wire
You're one badass fucking fractal
And you're just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way

Mandelbrot's in heaven, at least he will be when he's dead
Right now he's still alive and teaching math at Yale
He gave us order out of chaos, he gave us hope where there was none
And his geometry succeeds where others fail
If you ever lose your way, a butterfly will flap its wings
From a million miles away, a little miracle will come to take you home

Just take a point called Z in the complex plane
Let Z1 be Z squared plus C
And Z2 is Z1 squared plus C
And Z3 is Z2 squared plus C and so on
If the series of Z's should always stay
Close to Z and never trend away
That point is in the Mandelbrot Set
Mandelbrot Set you're a Rorschach Test on fire
You're a day-glo pterodactyl
You're a heart-shaped box of springs and wire
You're one badass fucking fractal
And you're just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way
And you're just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way
Go on change the world in a tiny way
Come on change the world in a tiny way

Category:

Music

Tags:

• PAX
• John
• Coulton
• Acoustic

[jokerdhell]

Joco is the greatest singer, ever.

[jocopro]

JoCo Soft Rocks (if you know his songs that is funny :)

[JakobiaP]

@Noiprox cousins or cosines? :D

[NSMBking]

Song is wrong he's dead.

[CousinoMacul]

RIP Benoit Mandelbrot!

[outhacku]

0:41 STAR POWER ACTIVATED! XD

[Noiprox]

The equation in the lyrics is indeed the equation for the classic Mandelbrot set. It is not a special case of the Julia fractal. rather, there is a corresponding Julia fractal for every point in the Mandelbrot set. They are like cousins.

In order to get a picture of the Mandelbrot set, you have to pick lots of C's. Each one represents a pixel, and you color the pixels based on how long they take to escape, or if they never escape.

[aitshi]

The same equation is applied to make different fractals when Z is a different imaginary number. Go ahead and jump in if I'm wrong or confirm with me if I'm right, because it's only a guess.

[aitshi]

I could rant a whole reply to this one comment. However, you don't deserve to see my, JoCo's, or your mother's face, so if you want I'll type it.

[Halster310]

OMG! Im a nerdfighter too! <3

DFTBA

[GohModley]

this proves retards can sing just fine

[enoughmet]

anyone has tabs?