Mandelbrot Set (Demo) Songtext
von Jonathan Coulton

"Pathological monsters!"
Cried the terrified mathematician
Every one of them is a splinter in my eye

I hate the Peano Space and the Koch Curve
I fear the Cantor Ternary Set
The Sierpinski Gasket makes me wanna cry

And a million miles away
A butterfly flapped its wings
On a cold November day
A man named Benoit Mandelbrot was born

His disdain for pure mathematics
And his unique geometrical insights
Left him well equipped to face those demons down

He saw that infinite complexity
Could be described by simple rules
Used his giant brain to turn the game around


And he looked below the storm
And saw a vision in his head
A bulbous pointy form
Picked his pencil up and he wrote his secret down

Just take a point called Z in the complex plane
Let Z1 be Z squared plus C
And Z2 is Z1 squared plus C
And Z3 is Z2 squared plus C
And so on
If the series of Z′s should always stay
Close to Z and never trend away
That point is in the Mandelbrot Set

Mandelbrot Set, you're a Rorschach Test on fire
You′re a day-glo pterodactyl
You're a heart-shaped box of springs and wire
You're one badass fucking fractal
And you′re just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way

Mandelbrot′s in heaven
At least he will be when he's dead
Right now he′s still alive and teaching math at Yale


Gave us order out of chaos
He gave us hope where there was none
His geometry succeeds where other fail

If you ever lose your way
A butterfly will flap its wings
From a million miles away
A little miracle will come to take you home

Just take a point called Z in the complex plane
Let Z1 be Z squared plus C
And Z2 is Z1 squared plus C
And Z3 is Z2 squared plus C
And so on
If the series of Z's should always stay
Close to Z and never trend away
That point is in the Mandelbrot Set

Mandelbrot Set, you′re a Rorschach Test on fire
You're a day-glo pterodactyl
You′re a heart-shaped box of springs and wire
You're one badass fucking fractal
And you're just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way

And you′re just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way
Go on, change the world in a tiny way
Come on, change the world in a tiny way