Geometry, Baby!

I'm not much of a mathematician. I can do the important stuff like keep my checkbook in order and estimate how much wallpaper I need. But I leave the theoretical stuff to the experts who are trained in that discipline. Like people who have an enormous dry erase board in their living room that's covered with indecipherable squiggles and numbers that they will occasionally experience some sort of epiphany over and erase a tiny area and substitute some other symbols that for some reason known only to them, seem more appropriate. I have always approached math from a more aesthetic point of view. I enjoy the interesting intricacies such as the powers of two and perfect squares. The Fibonacci sequence I find particularly fascinating, a string of numbers in which any number is the sum of the previous two numbers. And now, I am in love with fractal geometry. At last, a branch of mathematics that can measure and explain nature. It's no surprise that the man who first described fractals was considered a nut case and was shunned and ridiculed by his colleagues. But we have Benoit Mandelbrot to thank for inventing fractal geometry. This, in my opinion, qualifies the man for sainthood, or at least my personal reverence. I would bet that at a dinner party, he's the most interesting guy at the table.