Fractal dimension

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In geometric measure theory, fractal dimensions enable consistent statistical indexes of complexity in patterns. Since fractal patterns can be scale-variant, measuring space-filling capacity should be possible in non-integer (fractal) dimensions. The main idea of "fractured" dimensions has a long history in mathematics, but the term itself was brought to the fore by Benoit Mandelbrot based on his 1967 paper on self-similarity, where he discusses fractional dimensions. In that paper, Mandelbrot cited previous work by Lewis Fry Richardson describing the counter-intuitive notion that a coastline's measured length changes with the length of the measuring stick used (see Fig. 1). In terms of that notion, the fractal dimension of a coastline quantifies how the number of scaled measuring sticks required to measure the coastline changes with the scale applied to the stick. There are several formal mathematical definitions of fractal dimension that build on this basic concept of change in detail...

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