In recent weeks the how, when and where of eating fruit has been raging on the Home Truths airwaves. Alan Davies daringly combined a mathematical concept and a vegetable to take the debate to a new dimension... A fractal* is - well, look it up. Here's how to reveal the fractal in the cauliflower:
1. Remove leaves, if any, and hold the cauliflower in your left hand, base of stump pointing towards you, knife in right hand.
2. What you will see are a number of 'branches' growing off the stump. Choose the biggest branch - this is usually the one closest to the end of the stump - and cut it off, close to the 'trunk'.
3. Repeat step 2.
4. Repeat step 2 again - I think you're getting the idea.
5. As you work your way up the trunk, lopping branches off, you'll find that whilst each branch is smaller than the previous one, it's otherwise identical - this is how you know you're dealing with a fractal, it's a property called self-similarity.
6. Eventually, you'll find that you need a magnifying glass to see the last branches you cut off, and you will be left with a beautiful pointy stump that looks a bit like a pine-cone, and a pile of cauliflower branches, unfortunately all of different sizes, and most quite useless for boiling up in the British way.
What's the point of all this? I can't remember.
* A fractal is "an apparently irregular or chaotic geometric entity generated by repeating, according to mathematical formula, ever-diminishing subdivisions of a basic geometric shape."
