skip to main content
LOTERRE

LOTERRE

Search from vocabulary

Content language

| español français
Search help

Concept information

Preferred term

self-similarity  

Definition(s)

  • In mathematics, a self-similar object is exactly or approximately similar to a part of itself (i.e., the whole has the same shape as one or more of the parts). Many objects in the real world, such as coastlines, are statistically self-similar: parts of them show the same statistical properties at many scales. Self-similarity is a typical property of fractals. Scale invariance is an exact form of self-similarity where at any magnification there is a smaller piece of the object that is similar to the whole. For instance, a side of the Koch snowflake is both symmetrical and scale-invariant; it can be continually magnified 3x without changing shape. The non-trivial similarity evident in fractals is distinguished by their fine structure, or detail on arbitrarily small scales. As a counterexample, whereas any portion of a straight line may resemble the whole, further detail is not revealed. (Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-similarity)

Broader concept(s)

Synonym(s)

  • self similarity
  • selfsimilarity

In other languages

URI

http://data.loterre.fr/ark:/67375/MDL-C3B7XWBX-C

Download this concept:

RDF/XML TURTLE JSON-LD Last modified 4/24/23