Chaos game

Okay kiddo, have you ever played connect the dots? Well, a chaos game is a little bit like that, but a lot more fun and complicated.

So imagine you draw a triangle, and you pick one point inside the triangle. Now, you roll a die (that has six sides numbered 1 through 6) and based on which number comes up, you move halfway from your point toward one of the three vertices of the triangle.

Now, let’s say you roll a 1 and the closest vertex is to the left of your point. You move halfway between your point and the left vertex and put a dot on that spot.

Now, you do this over and over and over, lots and lots of times, and after a while, you will start to see a pattern. The dots will not just be scattered randomly all over the triangle, but they will actually form a pattern that repeats itself.

But wait, there’s more! If you use a different shape, like a square, pentagon, or hexagon, you’ll get a different pattern of dots. The number of sides on the shape determines the number of points you need for the pattern to repeat itself.

So, a chaos game is a fun way to use math to create cool patterns without even trying. Got it?