When the weather changes and hurricanes hit, nobody believes that the laws of physics have changed. Similarly, I don't believe that when the stock market goes into terrible gyrations its rules have changed. It's the same stock market with the same mechanisms and the same people.
Benoit MandelbrotI went to the computer and tried to experiment. I introduced a very high level of experiment in very pure mathematics.
Benoit MandelbrotA fractal is a mathematical set or concrete object that is irregular or fragmented at all scales...
Benoit MandelbrotI claim that many patterns of Nature are so irregular and fragmented, that, compared with Euclid - a term used in this work to denote all of standard geometry - Nature exhibits not simply a higher degree but an altogether different level of complexity ... The existence of these patterns challenges us to study these forms that Euclid leaves aside as being "formless," to investigate the morphology of the "amorphous."
Benoit Mandelbrot