We live in an irregular world in time and space that is very much at the boundary between predictable and unpredictable behavior. However, Voss cautions against attaching too much importance to such measurements of fractal dimension, which can be a difficult property to pin down accurately because of the infinity of different shapes that can be analyzed within any given image. In 1995 Voss left IBM and joined the Center for Complex Systems and Brain Science at Florida Atlantic University. His recent work involves applying fractal analysis to financial variables, such as seeming randomness in stock price patterns, as well as to digital mammography to improve the diagnostic ability of radiologists, particularly in the early detection of breast cancer. This is an area where early diagnosis has particular importance in terms of increasing life expectancy, but to date the diagnosis of breast cancer from X-ray mammograms has proven to be an extremely difficult perceptual process.
Science is a series of approximations.
What we call the great equations of science, are not something we can prove to be true. In his eyes, this is just as true of science as it is of art. Copyright 1999, The American Physical Society. The APS encourages the redistribution of the materials included in this newsletter provided that attribution to the source is noted and the materials are not truncated or changed.