Strange Attractors and Fractal Dimensions

Lucas Yudi Hataishi

25 de Agosto de 2016

Contedo
1 The box-counting dimension
1.1 The Middle Third Cantor Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3
3

The box-counting dimension

Assume tha we have a set which lies in a N-Dimensional Cartesian space. We then imagine covering the space
by a grid of N-dimensional cubes of edge length . We then count the number of cubes N () needed to cover
the set. The box-counting dimension is then given by
D0 = lim

0

lnN ()
ln(1/)

(1)

Looking to the expression above we have:

N () D0
So the number of cubes needed to cover the set increases with  in a power law fashion with exponent D0 . If
one assumes that only needs to resolve the location of points in the set within an accuracy of , then N () tells
us how much information we need to do this ( the information is the location of the N () cubes), and D0 tells
us how rapidly the required information increases as the required accuracy increases.

1.1

The Middle Third Cantor Set

Take the closed interval [0,1], and remove the open middle third interval (1/3, 2/3), leaving the two intervals
[0, 1/3] and [2/3, 1]. Now remove the open middle thirds of each of these two intervals. Continuing in this
way ad infinitum, the set of remaining points is the Middle Third Cantor Set.It is uncountable, has Lebesgue
measure zero, it is compact and have no isolated points. This set has zero Lebesgue Measure since at the nth
stage of construction the total length of the remaining intervals is (2/3)n , adn this length goes to zero when n
goes to infinity. Each point in the Cantor Set can be specified by giving its location at successive stages of the
construction of the set. Associating right with 1 and left with 0, yields a representation of an element of the
Cantor set as a infinite string of zeros and ones