'Math can make our brains light up in the same way art and music do'

[elleng]

said no one EVER!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/opinion/sunday/the-worlds-most-beautiful-mathematical-equation.html?

[JI7]

1. doesn't classical music help with math and other learning ?

[elleng]

2. Allegedly, according to some.

Can't prove it by ME!

[Igel]

29. Can't prove it by controlled studies.

Or studies that make different assumptions about causality between classical music and learning and look for confounds. For example, that effort and organization are required for both.

Consider the claim to be without evidence.

[dchill]

3. Yes, but math doesn't help with classical music.

[KelleyKramer]

41. Actually math does help

In all music there is timing, a 4/4 or say a 3/4 for example

Those are mathematical slices of time, so being good at math can be a big help playing music

[DrDan]

45. of course it does

http://www.ams.org/samplings/math-and-music

[MineralMan]

50. Not so at all.

Years ago, I wrote a program in Visual Basic that wrote minuets in the style of Mozart. They were based on math algorithms, randomization and formulas that were based on Mozart's typical harmonies and structures. The interface let you pick a key and tempo, within a small range. Then the program created a midi file and played the minuet on a midi harpsichord voice.

The results varied, and most of them weren't particularly brilliant, however every so often it would do something interesting and quite musical. All of its compositions, though were proper minuets and in the right style. But they were all just math exercises really, and lacked the composer's genius.

It took me a week of fairly steady work to create, but it was just an experiment.

[drray23]

52. yes some studies have shown that.

Conversely, many of my colleagues ( I am a physicist ) also play a musical instrument. I play guitar, flute and banjo, dabble with piano.
Some of my colleagues are fiddlers, pianists, mandolin players. etc.. The vast majority also enjoy listening to classical music (I am a season subscriber for the richmond (virginia) opera and so are many of my colleagues).
Apparently, affinity for mathematics is correlated with music ?

[LeftInTX]

4. It did for me!!

I was into art as a kid, I was pretty good at it, but knew it wouldn't lead to a career. Spontaneously, I found I had a knack for math, in particular geometry. I was hooked. Majored in it.

Did you know that there infinite ways to express any number? For instance 2 = 4/2 or 5-3 etc etc. With infinite possibilities comes creativity.

I also took piano for 5 years. Although I was a mediocre player, it instilled a long lasting music appreciation in me.

[Charles Bukowski]

5. Makes sense. Music itself is governed by several mathematical principles.

[pnwmom]

6. Not true! I had a high school friend who would swoon over beautiful calculus solutions.

So I was prepared when I had my own child who loved math.

[Drahthaardogs]

18. I am very good at math but I am also one of those

People who have no emotional response to music. Mostly I find it annoying. My son is even better at math and mastered calculus through differential equations in high school and scored a perfect on AP exams. He also has no emotional attachment to music.

[Warren DeMontague]

7. I need to clean my glasses because I swear I thought it said "meth"

I'm like yeah, but is it worth being awake for a week, losing your teeth and becoming convinced your couch is a part of a government conspiracy to spy on you?




anyway, yes, math.

Math is pretty friggin' interesting, but not the way they teach it to you in school. Usually.

[Duppers]

8. A physicist I know very well

Says that when he has found a solution to equations that fill in pieces of a larger pattern, he get a "beautiful high" that he can compare to no other feeling.

From the article:
"The researchers found a strong correlation between finding an equation beautiful and activation of the medial orbitofrontal cortex, a region of the prefrontal cortex just behind the eyes. This is the same area that has been shown to light up when people find music or art beautiful, so it seems to be a common neural signature of aesthetic experience."

[Buns_of_Fire]

9. I got horny when I discovered Zeller's Congruence. Does that count? nt

[Lucky Luciano]

10. I think Stoke's Theorem in its full generality is super cool!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokes'_theorem







Perfection!

[exboyfil]

32. A foundational concept

So important in electrical engineering. I remember being reintroduced to it when I was helping my daughter in her Calculus III class.

[Lucky Luciano]

42. Do the EE folks use Stokes in the context of n dimensional manifolds?

Last edited Mon Apr 17, 2017, 05:52 PM - Edit history (1)

That was the thing that really knocked my socks off. In Calc III you see Green's theorem, the divergence theorem, and the calc III version of Stokes with surface integrals. These all seem somewhat complicated, but when the machinery of smooth manifolds is built up, the statement of Stokes Theorem is simplicity itself - and the proof almost trivial with the developed machinery!

Definitely my favorite Theorem in math. I attached a picture of the formula above because it deserved it!

[exboyfil]

47. Faraday's Law of Induction

Usually written in differential form.

Used to predict the Electromotive Force from a magnetic field with an electrical circuit.

I am a Mechanical Engineer so that is about where my knowledge stops.

[Lucky Luciano]

48. Cool!

[dreamland]

11. I'm reliving every joyful minute of middle school math

...with my kid. I can't wait for high school math.

[3catwoman3]

12. It makes mine freeze, sorry to say.

Some years ago, my husband gave me a book entitled Math Without Tears. It didn't help. When I got to page 6 and it still wasn't clear after I had read it about a dozen times, I gave up.

When I did poorly at high school algebra, I thought I just didn't "get it." The teacher was fresh out of school. The following year, she was fired, as it turned out a whole lot of us weren't "getting it." In senior year math, out teacher handed us a little black book for the calculus quarter, and said, "Here, this is all self-explanatory." Yeah, sure. Might as well have been Chinese or Arabic - total alien symbols with no translation.

I have no interest in understanding calculus, but I do wish I were better at algebra.

[Javaman]

15. right there with you.

In 9th grade algebra, I was out with the flu for a week.

that was the beginning of the end.

my teacher, tried tutoring me, but she had the patience of a gnat and actually said to me, "this is so easy, why aren't you understanding this!" Outside, I just got sad over how dumb she made me feel, inside I was thinking, "because you suck as a teacher".

I had enjoyed math up until that point (didn't love it, but enjoyed it) from that moment on, it was just one frustration after another in that class, I failed it, and it took my very patient father (who never had patience at any other thing regarding me, but did for this, go figure) to tutor me through summer school so I could pass the NY state regents.

It's only 30+ years later, that I have picked up the idea, something that my dad would always say, that algebra is like a puzzle that needs a solution.

So very slowly, I started reteaching myself algebra at my very slow snails pace. And my enjoyment of math (not love lol) is returning at a glacial pace.

[LeftInTX]

22. Man, that week lost probably made all the difference

You probably missed a tidbit on which a bunch of other stuff hinged....

Tutoring by the teacher was probably rushed and she probably didn't try to figure out what piece of the puzzle you missed. She should have used her math skills to patiently determine your math problem

Also the material introduced after you returned to class needed to be re-introduced. So, you actually needed double catch-up.

I bombed at math as a kid, then eventually I went on the major in it.

[Javaman]

25. right on all points.

She was near retirement and probably didn't give a damn anymore.

I'm still terrible at math, but I have this part of me that literally yearns to know calculus and applied physics, but I haven't anywhere near the base that is required for either.

So I just read books on various theories and try to wrap my brain around them, knowing what I do pull out them are only scratching the surface of truly wondrous things.

life, you know?

[pansypoo53219]

34. algebra is dyslexic math.

all fine til i hit EQUATIONS & geometry. -/+ is my downfall.

[struggle4progress]

13. Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.

Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1923

[Orrex]

16. "Here's looking at Euclid."

[struggle4progress]

17. !

[3catwoman3]

36. Pinboy3niner better...

...watch out. You are some serious competition. Well played!

[WinkyDink]

26. Ah, but it took a poet to express it.

[Hoyt]

14. Back in the 60s and 70s, some accounting firms began hiring music majors when they could not get

people trained in accounting. The firms reasoned that music and math were very similar in core respects. Have no way to verify that, but it does make sense.

[LeftInTX]

23. Accounting and music are somewhat related

Both require basic arithmetic skills and bit of algebraic skills.

I imagine that accounting has got to be fairly dull for music majors, but as the saying goes "a job is a job".

[Orrex]

19. When I budget correctly and make it through to next payday, it's beautiful

Does that count?

[ProfessorGAC]

20. Well, It Works For Me Ellen

My quick story. When stuck in traffic i'll do geeky stuff like extract cube roots or compound interest in my head. I know, i know.

So one day driving from the way north suburbs, i stumble on this pattern in numbers where anybody can square any number containing all 1's. (at least to 9 digits) No calculator, just need to know how to count. I get all excited about this pattern in the numbers and when i get home i tell my wife how cool this is! She says: "You are such a geek!'. Obviously the lit up brain didn't last, LOL! Nah, really she gets me completely.

(To illustrate if anybody cares: Take any number in which all digits are 1. Example 1,111. To square that, all you need to is count up to the number of 1's, and count backward, not repeating the highest number. So, the answer to 1,111^2 is 1,234321. IF we use 11,111 the answer would be 123,454,321.) There are patterns for 3 and 9 also but they are a pinch more complicated.

[LeftInTX]

30. Compound interest in your head!! Oh my!!!

You're a number theory person.

I remember getting stuck on mortgage amortization schedules when we got an adjustable rate mortgage for our house. (I know. I know) I remember being obsessed with it 24/7 and I was probably trying to figure it out while stuck in traffic. I tried using a fancy calculator, but we needed a computer and printer.

When I was in college, I would work on calculus/physics/chemistry problems in my head, but needed to get to that pencil and paper to figure it all out. I couldn't do chemistry without a slide rule/calculator.

But I was never good with number theory or arithmetic.

When my kids were young, I discovered those math magic books which are really cool.

I highly recommend math magic books for kids

[Lucky Luciano]

33. Number theory is probably the hardest math there is in the world!

Probably tied with algebraic geometry in difficulty when you get to the cutting edge.

Really hard real analysis (i.e. Advanced calculus) is tractable to understand at the edge of human knowledge, but number theory and algebraic geometry really are the outer limits and backbreaking to understand what is already known.

[TheBlackAdder]

21. Yes, math is the hardcore rock of music. Every third thing thought is a screaming F-word.

[3catwoman3]

37. Kind of like trying to play...

...something written in 6 sharps. My max is 3 flats or sharps. I prefer flats, and my favorite key is C major.

[ProfessorGAC]

43. Weird Thought On That

First, at some point if there are enough sharps or flats, at some point you can just change the key and reduce the sharps or flats. Like F# Major has 5 sharps, which are ALL the black keys, so to have another sharp would be something like sharping the 4th and making it a C. Now, it's a G# scale with a single flatted F, or an E. So, transposing to another key makes less flats or sharp, but it's still actually still in the same key.

Other weird thought: I have never on piano or guitar played a G# chord. For some reason, that is ALWAYS A flat to me. I'm almost like that with D#. It almost always becomes E Flat in my head. The A sharp/B Flat thing is a bit more fungible, just like C#/D flat. But, that G#/A flat thing is permanently burned into my head. It's always an A flat to me.

[3catwoman3]

46. That does not seem wierd...

...to me at all. My brain definitely prefers to think in flats.

[OriginalGeek]

40. while I'm not a huge fan

Mathcore is a thing:

[TheBlackAdder]

49. I'm just having flashbacks of my son's College Calculus tutoring.

[KittyWampus]

24. Art and Music are beautiful because of math. Geometric proportion, lines, curves, symmetry.

[WinkyDink]

27. And ther higher one goes in the studies, the more the twain do meet.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

28. Math makes my head explode.

I majored in music, have been doing music ever since, but math does not make me happy. I am better at it than I used to be but it does not bring me joy.

[LeftInTX]

31. The visual in your statement!

Makes me think a kid literally banging on a piano.

[MineralMan]

35. I have to disagree a bit with this.

Music and math are inextricably connected. The physics of music, from vibrational nodes of strings to the resonance of cavities in wind instruments, involves some very interesting and beautiful math. Once I started understanding the mathematics of music, music, as a performer and as a listener took on new dimensions. Understanding the math of music made me a better musician, as well, since I understood much better what could make the sounds I was creating more beautiful, since I could focus better on the harmonics of the tone and alter those sounds because I understood their waveforms and what caused changes in them.

The very scales we find musical are all a matter of ratios of the frequencies of the notes. For example when fifth intervals are played perfectly in tune, one also can perceive the tone an octave lower than the lower note of the two. Chords sound the way they do due to the mathematics of the relationships between the notes that make up those chords.

The more you understand the mathematics that underlie music, the better you understand the music itself.

So, yes, math can be beautiful in itself. If you can see the graphic plot of an equation when you look at the equation, you can see some of the very elements that make up most art. If you understand the math of fractals, you will look at a tree completely differently than if you do not.


Fractal tree...

Math is at the core of our entire world. Understanding it makes the world more beautiful.

[3catwoman3]

38. I don't know much about fractals, but I do love...

...looking at them.

Here is an everyday example of a harmonic problem that drives me batty. My husband and I both have Phillips sonic toothbrushes (the really high tech ones). They hum/vibrate at different frequencies and it sounds so awful if we are using them at the same time that I have to go into a different bathroom.

Great toothbrush, BTW.

[MineralMan]

39. Absolutely. The dissonance between the complex sounds those

toothbrushes make could be really harsh on the hearing if they have different fundamental frequencies. Not only would there be dissonance at that fundamental frequency, but in all of the harmonics generated as well. I can imagine it could be very annoying, indeed.

My wife uses one of those, and tends to hum music around the fundamental frequency of her toothbrush. Generally, I'm still in bed when she uses it, and it's fascinating to hear the harmonies created when she hums against the drone of her toothbrush.

Fractal mathematics is pretty hard stuff to understand, but it has close relationships to many of the structures of nature. Sometimes, it's interesting to think about cosmology in fractal terms. Perhaps the universal equation includes the imaginary number, i. I don't know, and I'm not a mathematician, but there's a lot written about fractals and their relationship to nature. Some of it is more easily grasped than other writings, of course.

The math of complex numbers, which relate to i, is constantly growing in its applications. Sadly, the beauty of it is only really fully available to mathematicians.

[panader0]

44. "Two and two is four, four and four is eight,

c'mon pretty baby, don't you make me late. I said c'mon, baby don't you want go.
Back to that same old place, sweet home Chicago."

[AtheistCrusader]

51. Of course it does.

[AJT]

53. For a moment I read this as "METH can make our brains..."