Science. 1967 May 5;156(3775):636-8. doi: 10.1126/science.156.3775.636.
Geographical curves are so involved in their detail that their lengths are often infinite or, rather, undefinable. However, many are statistically "selfsimilar," meaning that each portion can be considered a reduced-scale image of the whole. In that case, the degree of complication can be described by a quantity D that has many properties of a "dimension," though it is fractional; that is, it exceeds the value unity associated with the ordinary, rectifiable, curves.
地理曲线在细节上非常复杂，以至于它们的长度往往是无限的，或者更确切地说，是无法定义的。然而，许多曲线在统计上是“自相似的”，这意味着每一部分都可以被看作是整个的缩小版。在这种情况下，可以用一个具有许多“维度”特性的量 D 来描述复杂程度，尽管它是分数的；也就是说，它超过了与普通可测曲线相关的单位值 1。
