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Showing posts from December, 2021

Hutchinson's Theorem (1981)

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See below for code This was the most up to date thing we proved in my maths degree.  It's a lovely little theorem in the field of Fractal Geometry that enables you to create images like the ones above.  But first some primers.... A fixed point of any map $f:X\to X$ is a point $x\in X$ such that $f(x) = x$.  If $X=\mathbb{R}^N$ we can define a contraction as a map $f$ which brings pairs of points closer together, i.e. we can say $f$ is a contraction if there's some $\lambda < 1$ such that for any $x_1,x_2$ we have  $|f(x_1)-f(x_2)| < \lambda |x_1-x_2|$.  Now, it's easy to see that if $f$ is a contraction then it has a unique fixed point.  All you have to do is note that for any $x$ the following sequence converges $$ x, f(x), f^2(x), f^3(x), ... $$ Why's that?  Well if we let $\epsilon = |x-f(x)|$ then $\epsilon\lambda^{n-1}$ is an upper bound for the distance between the $n^{th}$ and $n+1^{th}$ members of the sequence.  Since $\sum \epsilon\lambda^n$ converges

Simple model that gets you in spitting distance of a reasonable estimate of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity

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Background ECS - Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity - is the temperature change on Earth as a result of a doubling of atmospheric CO2.  That means going from 280 ppm (the level prior to the industrial revolution) past 420 (where we are now) and on to 560 ppm.  Most people probably understand why this would increase temperatures by now, but I'm going to repeat the argument briefly anyway, for completeness