Mathematical Art

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"It seems to me now that mathematics is capable of an artistic
excellence as great as that of any music, perhaps greater; not because
the pleasure it gives (although very pure) is comparable, either in
intensity or in the number of people who feel it, to that of music, but
because it gives in absolute perfection that combination, characteristic
of great art, of godlike freedom, with the sense of inevitable destiny;
because, in fact, it constructs an ideal world where everything is perfect
but true."

-Bertrand Russell in Autobiography 1967

Any thoughts?

Math is one of the wonders of our universe; yet I tell girls that they are prettier than math notions. I even write a duology (of which I'm currently writing the first half of the second book) in which I live a long-distance relationship with another girl and math, physics and chemistry form the core of our love.

Many a girl without any knowledge of differential calculus will not understand what I'm saying...

Let's say I meet a girl anywhere... I would say that said girl is prettier than the limit of a function at + infinity.

I think you just need to find a different way to ask those questions, unless you are looking for other Aspies who also view the same things you do--they also care about their grades and like it when you ask them how good they are. But not everyone is like that, and you may end up missing your chance with an intelligent NT. But if that's the kind of person you're looking for, then I guess you don't really need much more tact.

I also used to believe that everyone who couldn't do well in math or some other academic subject were worthless in my eyes and not much more than morons. But since it's not really any of my business, I don't put that kind of judgment on people anymore. It might just be that they're not doing well because something in their lives are distracting them. Regardless of whether or not I know people who have good scores in math or not, I do not desire to love them.

By the way, I am a female math student who has taken a moderately difficult differential calculus class and gotten 89%. I also took multivariable calculus, some linear algebra, and I'm now taking a class on partial differential equations, and probably doing quite fine at it.

However, I have no interest in love. If that sounds tempting, I'm sorry.

Suggestion: Do a google images search for the word "fractals." Don't forget to do it in images.

I'll second that!

WOW. I looked at your art site. MAN do YOU have tact! (sarc) But at least you are direct, to the point, and have standards. As for your love interests, you sound like someone that, if I was quite a bit younger, I would learn latin, get better in math, and join the math club just to talk to. (I like smart and decent women with that kind of attitude! What can I say? ) Anyway, I mean nothing by that either, just a little bit of truthful encouragement. I couldn't resist with the almost teasing tone of your post.

Math is quite beautiful, but too esoteric for most people.

Math romance...sounds like something I'd do. "Together, we are like the Dihedral Group on a regular rectangle, a harmonious intertwining of balance and complementarity; our hearts locked in an endless dance of permuting symmetry." Or something.

Edit: Heh. Not sure who I was serenading, a hypothetical woman or D4.

Last edited by twoshots on 06 Dec 2007, 2:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I was obsessed with fractals for quite a while. I used to have a program that you could plug numbers into and it would spit out the fractal images for you. VERY fun.

Wow, that's mind-blowingly pretty.

I can't get the thought out of my head! Using Math to complement a woman...my girlfriend is so lucky she doesn't exist right now. Here's a really bad one dipping a little deep into the analysis:
"You and I are like... a Cauchy sequence, growing only closer with time. Love is all we need baby; the love of you and me, and everyone who can love like us, make up everything that's Real."
+1 for anyone who gets that joke. -2 if you didn't think it was side splittingly hilarious.

...Anyway! To the matter at hand. I agree with ol' Bertrand Russel 100% on this one. People are often baffled when I say math is beautiful, but there is nothing more elegant, more pure, more excellent to lift one's mind above the mere fact of random sensation. I'm pretty sure being some kind of Platonist is like a prerequisite for loving math though. And having a degree of autism certainly biases me towards something which doesn't involve trying to make sense of my confused sensations.

Speaking of fractals, a lot of people have told me that my ART is like that of fractals.

"...it constructs an ideal world where everything is perfect
but true."

Fantastic quote.

For math-related goofyness, download the song "Finite Simple Group (of order two)" by The Klein Four Group.

You wrote:

Let's say I meet a girl anywhere... I would say that said girl is prettier than the limit of a function at + infinity.

This reminds me of the following mathematical poem
http://mathematicalpoetry.blogspot.com/ ... d-ego.html

This is a great topic thanks for sharing,

Haha, thanks, but I just realized that I made this post in the wrong thread, and was actually a response to someone else's thoughts on wanting a mathematically talented girlfriend. Now for my real response:

Yes, you could technically have a "perfect" in math that exists; but I find the beauty of math in the fact that there is more than one way of obtaining a solution in math, or that there are many solutions sometimes, no solutions or only one solution, and the fact that obtaining the solution in itself is also a kind of beauty (though some are more beautiful than others). Perhaps that is what makes it art, andf I"ve heard other mathematicians describe it as such.

However, despite the beauty of math, I would hesitate to call it "magic"--it doesn't work because we don't understand it but on the contrary; math works because we can understand it. And that's also what makes it so beautiful.

Unlike some people here, I'm afraid I'll have to disagree; the limit of a function approaching (not at) infinity is more beautiful than any person on this planet, even the person who might have discovered it. For it has existed the entire time, but required only someone to explain how it works, and there was not a time in the universe where it did not work. The fact that we are even able to work with a number as large and "mysterious" as infinity is beauty in itself. The fact that we are able to reduce it to nothing with a few equations is beauty in itself. The fact that we are able to work with an infinite number of sums and know what they add up to is beauty in itself. The fact that we are able to inductively reason what a sum, an equation or series of them might amount to without having to know every single sum or equation in the series is beauty in itself. And those are several reasons why I love math so much.

The people I have known who are good at math have always been slightly pompous about it, and here is another example, of someone who once was.

Math is beyond most people's comprehension, so it resembles magic. Does that mean the mathematically apt have mat right to be pompous? No.

Also, one does not have to know too much about math to create art.

It may seem like magic to some people, but that's not the true essence of math. If you would continue to call math magic, then it means you either don't understand it, have no desire to understand it, and possibly fail to see what makes math so beautiful. But not everyone pursues math, and ignorance of it doesn't make life any less interesting. That's all relative to what you find interesting.

The fact that I am happy to be able to understand math does not mean I can't display it, rather that some people do not care. It's only when you go to compare your ego by using your understanding of math that you cross the line.