Some context: Lewis Fry Richardson was the youngest of seven children born to Catherine Fry (1838-1919) and David Richardson (1835-1913). They were a prosperous Quaker family, David Richardson operating a successful tanning and leather manufacturing business. At age 12 he was sent to a Quaker boarding school, Bootham School in York, where he received an education in science, which stimulated an active interest in natural history. In 1898 he went on to Durham College of Science (a college of Durham University) where he took courses in mathematical physics, chemistry, botany, and zoology.
Richardson decided to search for a relation between the probability of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. However, while collecting data, he found that there was considerable variation in the various published lengths of international borders. For example, that between Spain and Portugal was variously quoted as 987 or 1214 km, and that between the Netherlands and Belgium as 380 or 449 km.  The reason for these inconsistencies is the "coastline paradox". Suppose the coast of Britain is measured using a 200 km ruler, specifying that both ends of the ruler must touch the coast. Now cut the ruler in half and repeat the measurement, then repeat:  Notice that the smaller the ruler, the longer the resulting coastline. It might be supposed that these values would converge to a finite number representing the true length of the coastline. However, Richardson demonstrated that this is not the case: the measured length of coastlines, and other natural features, increases without limit as the unit of measurement is made smaller. This is known nowadays as the Richardson effect.  At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community. Today, it is considered an element of the beginning of the modern study of fractals. Richardson's research was quoted by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot in his 1967 paper How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Richardson identified a value (between 1 and 2) that would describe the changes (with increasing measurement detail) in observed complexity for a particular coastline; this value served as a model for the concept of fractal dimension.
Who was Lewis Fry Richardson?
A: Richardson identified a value (between 1 and 2) that would describe the changes (with increasing measurement detail) in observed complexity for a particular coastline;
Some context: Tropic Thunder is a 2008 black satirical action comedy film directed by Ben Stiller, who stars with Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. as a group of prima donna actors who are making a fictional Vietnam War film. When their frustrated director drops them in the middle of a jungle, they are forced to rely on their acting skills to survive the real action and danger. The screenplay by Justin Theroux, Stiller, and Etan Cohen was from a story by Stiller and Theroux. The film was produced by Stuart Cornfeld, Stiller and Eric McLeod for Red Hour Productions and DreamWorks Pictures as an international co-production between the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
A trailer for the film was released in April 2008. The Calgary Herald gave it a rating of 3/5, commenting: "This could either be good or very, very bad." Gary Susman of Entertainment Weekly questioned whether the film would "... turn into precisely the kind of bloated action monstrosity that it's making fun of." The trailer received the "Best Comedy Trailer" award at the 9th annual Golden Trailer Awards. DreamWorks also released a red band trailer, the first of its kind used by the studio to promote one of its films.  Stiller, Downey, and Black appeared on the seventh-season finale of American Idol in a sketch as The Pips performing with Gladys Knight (via archival footage). The three actors also later performed a sketch at the 2008 MTV Movie Awards which featured the actors attempting to create a successful viral video to promote the film with awkward results. In September 2008, Stiller and Downey attended the San Sebastian International Film Festival to promote the film. A screening was shown, but it was not chosen to compete against the other films at the festival.  Between April 2008 and the film's commercial release in August 2008, the film had over 250 promotional screenings. On August 3, 2008, Stiller, Downey, and Black visited Camp Pendleton, a U.S. Marine Corps base in California, to present a screening to over a thousand military members and their families. The screening was on behalf of the United Service Organizations and included the actors heading to the screening by helicopter and Humvees. On August 8, 2008, a special 30-minute fictional E! True Hollywood Story aired about the making of Tropic Thunder. In video games, a themed scavenger hunt was incorporated into Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, and Stiller allowed his likeness to be used in the online Facebook application game based on the film.  As a tie-in for the film's release, Paramount announced it would market the energy drink known in the film as "Booty Sweat". Michael Corcoran, Paramount's president of consumer products, commented on the release: "We're very excited, because it has the potential to live for quite a while, well beyond the film." The drink was sold in college bookstores, on Amazon.com, and at other retailers.
Was the promotional efforts successful?
A:
The trailer received the "Best Comedy Trailer" award at the 9th annual Golden Trailer Awards.