by Steven Flintham (15A) Introduction When the Mandelbrot set first came
into prominence in the personal
computing world there were several
articles about it in various computer
magazines. Following a request from
Robin Morom in issue 36, I will
attempt to explain what the Mandelbrot
set is, but if you find this article
confusing and/or badly written you
might like to try one of these two
magazines:
Personal Computer World, December
1986, "Fractal Sets", page 196 onwards
Acorn User, May 1986, "Join The
Mandelbrot Set", page 80 onwards (note
that the accompanying programs have
several errors, detailed in the June
1986 "Blunderbox", page 18)
Although not just about the Mandelbrot
set, I also recommend "Chaos" by James
Gleick, published by Sphere Books.
If you find any errors in this
article, please let me know.
Complex numbers To understand how to plot the
Mandelbrot set, a basic grasp of
complex numbers is required. A complex
number is made up of a real number and
an imaginary number.
A real number is just an everyday
number like 4, -3 or 2.59. To be
precise, most of the numbers people
handle every day are rational, i.e.
they can be expressed in the form a/b
where a and b are integers ('whole
numbers'). There is another set of
numbers called irrational numbers and
these are also real numbers, but this
is a technicality.
An imaginary number is a multiple of a
'special' number which is given the
symbol i. This is defined as the
square root of -1.
The square of a number is the number
produced by multiplying it by itself.
For example, the square of 2 is 4
because 2x2=4 and the square of 3 is 9
because 3x3=9. The square root of a
number is the number which must be
squared to produce it. For example,
the square root of 4 is 2 because 2
squared is 4 and the square root of 9
is 3 because 3 squared is 4.
All positive real numbers have exactly
one square root, which will be a
positive real number. Using real
numbers only, negative real numbers do
not have a square root. For example,
there is no real number (positive or
negative) which when multipled by
itself gives -4 (the 'obvious' answer
-2 is wrong because -2x-2=4 not -4).
This is inconvenient, so we invent the
number i and say that the square root
of -1 is i by definition (which simply
means that we have decided this is the
case rather than worked it out from
something else). As a result of this,
i squared (ixi) is -1 (just as 2x2=4
because 2 is the square root of 4).
Having defined the square root of -1,
we can now find the square root of any
negative real number. This is done by
simply finding the square root of the
corresponding positive number and
multiplying it by i. For example, the
square root of -4 is i times the
square root of 4, or -2i.
As I said before, a complex number has
both a real and an imaginary part. An
example of a complex number is 3+4i,
which has real part 3 and imaginary
part 4i. 3+4i is NOT the same as 7i
because i is just another number and
(for example) 3+4x7 is clearly not the
same as 7x7 ('replacing' i by 7).
Complex numbers obey exactly the same
rules of arithmetic as real numbers.
This means that (for example):
3+4i + 7+2i = 10+6i
3+4i - (7+2i) = -4+2i
(3+4i) x (7+2i) = 3x7 + 3x2i + 4ix7 +
8xixi (using the normal rule for
multiplying out brackets) = 21 + 6i +
28i - 8 (since ixi=-1) = 13+34i
To square a complex number, multiply
it by itself as for a real number. For
example, 3+4i squared is:
(3+4i) x (3+4i) = 3x3 + 3x4i + 4ix3 +
4ix4i = 9 + 12i + 12i - 16 = -7+24i
In general, a complex number a+ib
squared is (axa-bxb)+(2xaxb)i.
Finally, there is the concept of the
magnitude of a complex number. The
magnitude or 'size' of a real number
is a fairly obvious idea - you simply
ignore the sign (plus or minus) of the
number, so that 6 is 'bigger' than 4
but 'smaller' than -7. The magnitude
of a complex number is defined as the
square root of the sum of the squares
of the real and imaginary parts. That
sounds rather forbidding, but it is
very simple. For example, the complex
number 3+4i has magnitude SQR(3x3 +
4x4) where SQR is the square root.
If you are interested, the length of a
line drawn from the point representing
a complex number in an Argand diagram
(see the next section) to the origin
is the magnitude of the number. This
length is found using Pythagoras'
theorem.
If I have thoroughly confused you by
now then all you really need to know
is that a complex number is a 'pair'
of real numbers - for example, 13+34i
could be considered as the pair
(13,34).
Argand diagrams You are probably familiar with the
idea that real ('ordinary') numbers
can be placed on a number line, like
this:
-2 -1 0 1 2 3
...:---:---:---:---:---:...
Similarly, complex numbers can be
represented on a plane (just a two
dimensional surface, like a table top)
with the real component on the 'x'
axis and the imaginary component on
the 'y' axis, like this:
Imaginary axis
.
.
- 2
:
:
- 1
:
-2 -1 : 1 2
...:---:---0---:---:... Real axis
:
:
- -1
:
:
- -2
.
.
Every complex number can be
represented as a point on this
diagram, which is called an Argand
diagram.
The Mandelbrot Set
Every point on the Argand diagram
either belongs to the Mandelbrot set
or it doesn't! To see if it does, we
use the following relationship:
z becomes z squared plus k
where z and k are both complex
numbers. z is initially 0 (or 0+0i, if
you prefer) and k is the complex
number corresponding to the point we
want to test. We apply this over and
over again, producing a new value of z
each time, until the magnitude of z is
either greater than 2 or it becomes
apparent that this will never happen.
If the magnitude of z never becomes
greater than 2 then we say that k lies
in the Mandelbrot set. Each repeat of
this calculation is called an
iteration.
If the magnitude of z does become
greater than 2 there is no problem as
we can see that this has happened.
However, we can never be sure that the
z will not become greater than 2.
Suppose we have performed a million
iterations and the magnitude of z is
still less than 2. It is still
possible that the next iteration will
make the magnitude of z greater than
2. In other words, it would take an
infinite number of iterations to be
sure that a point is in the Mandelbrot
set.
Even a supercomputer is going to have
problems repeating the calculation an
infinite number of times. We therefore
have to settle for being reasonably
sure and decide that after an
arbitrary number of iterations without
z getting larger than 2 we will
consider the point as being in the
Mandelbrot set.
This number must be reasonably large,
otherwise we will include many points
in the Mandelbrot set which are not
really in it. 32 may be enough, but
128 or 256 is better and as one gets
'deeper' into the set higher levels
may be necessary because all the
points you are considering will take
at least a certain number of
iterations before the magnitude of z
gets larger than 2. However, the
maximum number must not be too large
or the process will take too long.
The process described above is just
for ONE point on the Argand diagram.
Since there are infinitely many real
numbers, there are obviously an
infinite number of points on the
Argand diagram and so it is impossible
to calculate them all, even if we
don't perform an infinite number of
calculations to see if a point lies in
the Mandelbrot set.
Plotting the Mandelbrot set Plots of the Mandelbrot set on
computers are produced by treating the
screen as an Argand diagram and
plotting a point at each position
whose colour depends on whether or not
that point lies in the Mandelbrot set.
This will obviously use only two
colours, so it is usual to use one
colour for those points in the
Mandelbrot set and to colour points
not in the Mandelbrot set depending on
how many iterations it took to
determine that they were not in the
set. The screen does not have infinite
resolution and so we just have to
perform the above calculations for
each pixel on the screen.
Since you are likely to have a higher
maximum number of iterations (say 256)
that you have colours available, you
will have to decide on a method of
allocating colours. One solution is to
divide the colours evenly over the
possible number of iterations. Another
is to divide the number of iterations
by the number of colours availble and
use the remainder as the number of the
colour. In mode 2, for instance, a
point which had taken 240 iterations
to determine it was not in the
Mandelbrot set would be plotted in
colour 240 MOD 7=2. This method is
particularly useful for producing
plots in two colour modes.
It is traditional for pixels which
took the maximum number of iterations
(i.e. those which we are considering
as in the Mandelbrot set) to be black.
It is also quite common for no other
number of iterations (even one less)
to use black, although this is not
always a good idea (two colour plots,
for instance).
It is usual to produce square plots of
the Mandelbrot set, but this is not
necessary. The 'standard' Mandelbrot
'beetle' (I think it looks more like a
pear) is produced by plotting the
region with real components from -2.0
to 0.5 and imaginary components from
-1.25 to 1.25. The detail within this
region depends on the resulution of
the screen - the more pixels we have
across or up the screen the smaller we
can make the step between the
components of the points we plot.
We use the actual components when
testing the point, obviously, but when
we come to plot them we must convert
to screen coordinates. This is just a
scaling operation and for the 'beetle'
plot we could use something like this
(in BBC BASIC):
screen#x%=(real+2.0)*1280/2.5 (2.5
because the 'width' is 0.5-2.0=2.5)
screen#y%=(real+1.25)*1024/2.5 (2.5
because the 'height' is
1.25-(-1.25)=2.5)
This is a square plot but we have used
the full width and height of the
screen, so there will be some
horizontal 'stretching'. If this
bothers you you could replace the 1280
with 1024 in the expression for
screen#x% or increase the 'width' of
the plot from 2.5 to
2.5*(1280/1024)=3.125 (by adjusting
the real components corresponding to
the minimum and maximum real
components, such as using the range -2
to 1.25). However, since the
Mandelbrot set is an abstract object I
don't suppose it really matters if it
is 'distorted'.
The accompanying program Mandel plots
a specified region of the Mandelbrot
set. I have written this with
readability rather than speed of
execution in mind so that you can see
how it works. In other words, it
should be possible to write a BASIC
program which will plot the set to the
same level of detail more quickly, or
which has more features.
It should be straightforward to use -
it will wait for you to press SPACE
before clearing the screen afterwards.
It is quite slow, so you may want to
run it overnight and if you want to
keep a copy of the screen, make sure
that there is room on the disc for the
saved screen and that you are not
using a shadow mode. The accompanying
mode 0 screen was produced with this
program using the following parameters:
Real components from -2 to 1.25
Complex components from -1.25 to 1.25
Maximum number of iterations: 32
The program should also be fairly easy
to understand, but the main points are
mentioned here. Since BASIC does not
support complex numbers, the program
handles the real and imaginary
components separately. FNmandelbrot
performs the iterations and is called
by PROCplot#set which handles
converting between screen coordinates
and the corresponding complex number.
Note the use of the variable
old#z#real in FNmandelbrot - this is
needed because the two calculations to
square z are not intended to come in
sequence but occur (at least
theoretically) simultaneously, so it
is important to use the old real
component in both. This is no problem
for the calculating the new real
component but by the time the new
complex component is to be calculated
z#real has been overwritten by its new
value.
FNcolour simply chooses a colour
number depending on the number of
iterations - this is not a
particularly good routine but it is
nice and simple for demonstration
purposes.
If you want to write your own
Mandelbrot program, I would suggest
writing the number of iterations
performed for each pixel to a file,
possibly using a simple plot routine
like the one used here so that you can
monitor progress. You can then
experiment fairly quickly with
different methods of plotting the data
from the file.
An apology Finally, I would like to apologise for
any mathematical errors and
inconsistencies in this article. I
have a suspicion that there are
numerous little slips in terminology -
please do let me know about them, but
don't be too hard on me. I am also
aware that the mathematics of the
Mandelbrot set go much deeper than the
relatively simple calculations
involved in plotting it, but I know
nothing about this at the moment and I
suspect that it would be of little
interest to most people anyway.