It's all too complex for me

I have to admit that my maths is pretty poor. I can cope with basic algebra, I can do quadratic equations and if I think about it long enough I can differentiate and integrate. Where it all goes wrong for me is that bit about complex numbers. I mean, i = sqrt/-1? What's that all about, eh? I mean, I can't even find the ascii code that does square root, that's how bad it is.

However, I am rather in awe of the mandelbrot set, that rather fantastic fractal function which gives rise to this bad boy here.

However, that pales into insignificance when you see what these folks have been getting up to. They've done some extra mathematical wrangling and applied an extra algorithm or two to create an approximation of the 3D mandelbrot set. The results are somewhat breathtaking, to say the least.

To be honest, it kind of reminds me of the growth in the centre of that dodgy orange I talked about last month - while the overall shape is rather different, the fractal nature of said growth could not be denied. If I knew more about how to do the mathematics I'd be very interested to know what possible numerical wrangling could come up with a similar model.

In the meantime, here's one possible version of the 3D mandelbrot set. Pretty, isn't it?