Journal of Mathematics and the Arts

Transcription

Is Math Art? Of course it is! Why would you even... that's a dumb question. Hey guys, Tara Long here for Dnews today - to talk about one of my favorite subjects, math. Which as it turns out - is as valid a form of art, as any other. who knew? Now it's difficult to put into words, exactly what it is that makes numbers and symbols so appealing - but according to scientists, it boils down to simple brain chemistry. In a recent study at University College in London, researchers showed a group of mathematicians 60 different mathematical equations, and asked them to rate those equations on a scale of "ugly to "beautiful," while inside an fMRI scanner. The results showed that the more "beautiful" an equation was - according to the test subject - the more likely it was to elicit activity in the A1 field of the medial orbitofrontal cortex. This is the part of your brain that's typically associated with emotional responses to visual and musical beauty. Meaning people like us respond to numbers and equations, the same way other people do to music or art. But even people with no musical talent can still appreciate good music - so what constitutes beauty in math? And does the appreciation of it require some understanding of its meaning? Well, not necessarily. To test that idea, researchers performed the same study on a control group - with no special appreciation of math. And while those subjects did show a significantly lower emotional response to the equations - a handful of them were still capable of finding their beauty - even with no understanding of what they actually mean. So what makes an equation "objectively beautiful"? Is it just a formula of curves and shapes, maybe symmetry that makes it pleasing to the eye? It's difficult to quantify the exact reasons, but there is one equation consistently rated to be the most attractive - and that's Euler's identity (1+eiπ=0) - perhaps because it contains the 3 most fundamental numbers in the mathematical universe, e, pi, and i. It's a pretty hot equation, I'm not gonna lie. What's the ugliest, you ask? According to the mathematicians in this study, it's this - Srinivasa Ramanujan's rapidly converging infinite series of π. But hey - there's a lot about math I don't know. I'm not a wizard. If there's an equation out there you don't think gets enough recognition - then leave it in the comments below. Or tweet at me. And I can judge it, based on its looks. Like a nerdy hot or not. Or Tinder for geeks. And hey - if you've got more time to kill, why not go check out some of the other shows I do, like Rev3Games - or Hard Science, the #1 destination for videos of Anthony Carboni injuring himself.