Sunday, December 05, 2004
The Beauty of Mathematics
Plus signs, minus signs, multiplication, associative properties, distributive properties and even limits. These things I'm comfortable with. Daily use and all that. Cosines, sines, bovines...well these make me nervous. Perhaps old teaching methods failed to capture the innate beauty of these contraptions. Today, in the NYT magazine, there's an excellent photographic journey through the upper levels of trig. Who, aside from those mathematical whizzes, would have concluded that beauty lies in the formulae. No wonder these folks have smiles of serenity as they walk on their streets, shoelaces untied, belts missing beltloops, short-sleeved in the 32 degree weather. Please help them navigate our crosswalks; they are artists of the mind.
Advanced Trigonometry in plaster, as photographed by Hiroshi Sugimoto. A slide show is available. You'll have to register on the NYT site, if you haven't already, but it is well worth the minimal effort.
Plus signs, minus signs, multiplication, associative properties, distributive properties and even limits. These things I'm comfortable with. Daily use and all that. Cosines, sines, bovines...well these make me nervous. Perhaps old teaching methods failed to capture the innate beauty of these contraptions. Today, in the NYT magazine, there's an excellent photographic journey through the upper levels of trig. Who, aside from those mathematical whizzes, would have concluded that beauty lies in the formulae. No wonder these folks have smiles of serenity as they walk on their streets, shoelaces untied, belts missing beltloops, short-sleeved in the 32 degree weather. Please help them navigate our crosswalks; they are artists of the mind.
Advanced Trigonometry in plaster, as photographed by Hiroshi Sugimoto. A slide show is available. You'll have to register on the NYT site, if you haven't already, but it is well worth the minimal effort.
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