Fractal mountain. A computer graphics image of a three- dimensional pattern derived from the Mandelbrot Set, a group of complex numbers plotted using their real and imaginary parts as coordinates. Each point is assigned a shade and height depending upon its behaviour under a series of simple, but repeated, mathematical operations or mappings. The patterns are infinitely complicated, but appear to repeat themselves on whatever scale they are viewed. The study of such chaotic" mathematical behaviour is now used as a means of modelling real-world processes from stock market prices to population dynamics & fluid turbulence."