If you look carefully at the head of the rabbit, there are two small lobes about halfway along its length, just like the body of the rabbit. If you pretend that the head of the rabbit is going to be the body of a smaller rabbit, then there are lobes that could be the head and tail of the smaller rabbit. Although these sets are clearly very intricate, complicated and detailed, they also have structure and regularity . Fractals can be understood as the result of iterating geometric constructions. Repeat step 2, then patterns resembling the sequence of pictures shown below would be drawn.
Recursion is where a function or procedure can call itself while executing.
It is an example of using recursion to draw a picture of a fractal. Eventually the size of the objects that the computer is trying to draw will be smaller than it can actually draw on the screen. As we have seen in the previous thinking and programming opportunity, pictures of fractals may be created by iterating a geometric construction. The fractal image created in the previous thinking and programming opportunity will probably look something like the following picture. The fractal picture used to illustrate the notion of iterating a geometric construction looked like the following picture.