Difference between revisions of "Mathematical beauty"

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* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_beauty Mathematical beauty] @ Wikipedia
 
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_beauty Mathematical beauty] @ Wikipedia
* [http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/323334/what-was-the-first-bit-of-mathematics-that-made-you-realize-that-math-is-beautif What was the first bit of mathematics that made you realize that math is beautiful? (For children's book)]
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* [http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/323334/what-was-the-first-bit-of-mathematics-that-made-you-realize-that-math-is-beautif What was the first bit of mathematics that made you realize that math is beautiful? (For children's book)] @ math.stackexchange.com
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** [http://math.stackexchange.com/a/323676 Pascal's triangle]
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** [http://math.stackexchange.com/a/323490 Fibonacci numbers]
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** [http://math.stackexchange.com/a/323473 Prime numbers and colored boxes]
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** [http://math.stackexchange.com/a/323353 You can always divide something by two; magnify glass non-Euclidean geometry]
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** [http://math.stackexchange.com/a/323444 Frogs and recursion]
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** [http://math.stackexchange.com/a/323556 Naughty 37]
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** [http://math.stackexchange.com/a/323559 Magic squares]
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** [http://math.stackexchange.com/a/323399 Archimedes' method for computing areas and volumes]
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** [http://math.stackexchange.com/a/325829 Bean machine]
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** [http://math.stackexchange.com/a/323696 Pi]
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** [http://math.stackexchange.com/a/323441 Golden ratio]
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** [http://math.stackexchange.com/a/323871 Fractals]
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** [http://math.stackexchange.com/a/324102 Realising why zero is not nothing]
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** [http://math.stackexchange.com/a/323530 Mandelbrot set]
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[[Category:Art]]
 
[[Category:Art]]

Revision as of 08:15, 18 May 2016

Mathematical beauty describes the notion that some mathematicians may derive aesthetic pleasure from their work, and from mathematics in general.

Description

They express this pleasure by describing mathematics (or, at least, some aspect of mathematics) as beautiful. Mathematicians describe mathematics as an art form or, at a minimum, as a creative activity. Comparisons are often made with music and poetry.

Bertrand Russell expressed his sense of mathematical beauty:

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

Paul Erdős expressed his views on the ineffability of mathematics when he said, "Why are numbers beautiful? It's like asking why is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don't see why, someone can't tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is".

See also

External links