Beautiful Mind - Jason Padgett and Fractals

**DJ Ms. White** · 05-02-12, 11:59 PM

I saw abilities like that on the bottom end of the spectrum of my gifted class even in elementary school (those with only an IQ of 130). I just don't see it as a rare thing.
As far as his paper, it's an impressive thing to do things from first principal, but his attempt wasn't exactly well done, not at the level I've seen other savants do.

**Derek** · 05-03-12, 01:15 AM

Originally Posted by Alundil

I'm a bit curious as to why you're doubtful of the savant description though.

Because nothing I've seen in the article or the paper demonstrates a true understanding of math at even an above average level. What I see is someone who has a passion for drawing geometric art, and now has decided to pursue some of the math behind that geometry, but not at an exceptionally high level. If he's a savant in anything it's art, not math, but really I'ld rather just not use that word: I don't think it applies in this situation. This is the Wikipedia article on savantism. Note that it specifically refers to people with autism and related disorders. Clearly something happened in his brain as a result of the incident, but nothing in this article suggests that he gained autism from it. And really. I hope he didn't. Its much better to be a normal genius than an autistic savant.

As for the fractals, I'm not a mathematician. In math I am a layperson. I freely admit that. But what I am is a highly analytical person and am paid quite well for my analytical skills. With that said I take in concepts pretty well and pretty quickly. With that said, many of his drawings have, what appear to me, fractal like qualities, namely self-symmetry across various levels of magnification.

None of them show self-similarity. Here is a Mandelbrot zoom video that shows how similar structures continue reappearing no matter how far you zoom in. If you zoom in on one of his pictures enough, all you'll see is a straight line.

His point about Pi perhaps is not well explained (or perhaps his thought process through the explanation) but I find it an interesting thought nonetheless and see it as perhaps a novel new way of thinking about an old concept.

Maybe its new to you, but I've known about that method of approximating pi since at least middle school. It was developed by Archimedes and its known as the method of exhaustion.