in this book, Mandelbrot is trying to prove that first, the price movement's distribution is scaling invariant, meaning a security's log price-change's distribution is same as with its 5-min's or with its daily's(or even monthly); second, price movement is not purely random/normaldistribution/brownian/random walk on street(they are all same description), meaning if u use normal distribution as one of ur bases for ur model, u will not only be theoretically wrong, but also be punished in real-life trading, such as the case of long-term capital. third, price movement does have cycle, but it length can not be determined in trading time, meaning u will not be able to decide when those cycles are going to start or end; fourth, changes of price movements do concentrate, meaning big moves will happen continouesly, or very closely to each other. the major implication to me is that many current financial theories are wrong, specially, those using normal distribution(such as option model) as basic assumption for security price movement. it also may prove that some of current price-based models(such as some trend following system) have some merit. but manay systems based on channel(such as bollinger bands)will not work in long-run. with those in mind and many available mathematical tools, one should be able to build a good financial model.

To read this book you need truly to understand math and the markets. There is no questions that Mandelbrot is one of the greatest figures of our time. What he claimed based on his studies on cotton trading in the early 60s might not be close to the reality of today, but the way he approached it makes you think twice about the markets. Cotton trading is so different from stock market trading because it is either spoting trading or futures trading, and it is based on margins. The market usually has poor liquidity and with few players in it. The conclusions the book made could poorly extend to the general markets. The hard-to-follow math notations kept distracting me from following the main subjects. Anyway, this book will teach you something new, but you have to understand math and the markets, deeply.

This is a detailed and extensive biography of Abraham Robinson, from his chilhood to his life in Yale. A well-writen and most carefully researched text that is a plesure to read. I love this book, specialy chapter four, Robinson war years, and chapter eigth, when he was is UCLA. You don't have to read Robinsons "Non-Standard Analysis" to apreciate this book, but knowing the implication in modern mathematics of it will help. All in all, a superb biography and specially great for epistemology of non-standard analysis.

As a teacher attempting to introduce chaos theory into high school physics and mathematics classes, the book gave many examples of practical activities. It also gave many examples of how chaos could and would become useful. There are currently so many false methods being used to integrate subject matter in education; chaos theory has great potential to demonstrate clear connections between arts, sciences, and social sciences, and Peak and Frame in a simple manner bring this to light.

One of the only fractal books available for non-mathematicians, An Eye for Fractals interweaves beautiful photographs of natural scenes with explanations of their fractal geometric characteristics. It gives enough information about fractals for a beginner to understand what they are and how they apply to nature. Its photography makes it a perfect book to leave out on the coffee table.

Fractal geometry is revolutionizing the way that scientists perceive the universe and its underlying order. Anyone can benefit greatly from this understanding by reading this book.

Mandelbrot is the person who introduced the fractal theory to the world in its present form. Many fields of science including geophysics have gained from fractals. However, this is not the book one should read to gain knowledge on the subject.

It is not an easily readable book. 1. It is not well-organized 2. It does not cover necessary things in detail 3. Frustratingly long in some parts. Instead the books: Feder, Fractals; Turcotte, Fractals and Chaos in Geology and Geophysics can be recommended.

Fractal geometry may be interesting as a historical book, after one gains a sufficient knowledge on fractals.

This was the book that first caught my attention. It was the cover diagram: a figure the like of which I had never seen. One thing led to another until I finally wrote my own application of fractals, Fractals in Music.

Mandelbrot is an odd character, but a superb thinker. His book does not offer a lot of science, but rather a compelling view of how this fascinating and growing topic developed. I recommend it highly.

highly personal, highly self-congradulatory, highly-amusing, highly interesting, a great read! More math/sci authors should tell us how they really feel like Mandelbrot!

I went and asked K. G. Monks for help. Even with his direction I only got a bad approximation.
The rest of the book is less readable than that. It is a collection of Dr. Mandelbrot's
old articles. I interviewed Dr. Mandelbrot several years ago before a lecture of his
at U. C. Riverside. He is not a very friendly or communicative man. His
articles in general are very hard to read and without adequate history and definitions.
It is , thus, incredible that his original book was such a success. Looking at
his work, I would call him a "noise" specialist and not a fractalist at all.
This book is really a book about very hard parts of noise theory.
In my mind Dr. Mandelbrot is very wrong in many of his conclusions ,
but he has some very nice results here. Don't
waste your money if you don't have a graduate degree in mathematics
with a specialization in noise, chaos and dynamics. Most of his recent
articles have been on multifractals applied to stock market theory.
He is one of the great men of our age
and these articles are his feet of clay.

M. is a great man in (large) part because of what he has written, including these papers. And yes they are challenging. I find them nearly self-contained though.