An artist-mathematician illuminates a world of infinite beauty

http://www.tufts.edu/alumni/magazine/fall2009/features/mapping.html

by r11t • 17 years ago

21 7 17 years ago

modelic3• 17 years ago

This is kinda cool but the pictures are the standard interpretations of what mathematicians imagine. I would have liked to see some non-standard approach with a bit more abstraction.

andreyf• 17 years ago

I don't know about the "standard interpretation"... the first picture is usually expressed with all of the "squares" of equal size (it's a matrix), and an "x" through each digit at (x_n, y_n), n being positive integers.

aerique• 17 years ago

Some of them are pretty standard but, IMHO, for most of them he struck a nice balance between the standard and artistic interpretation.

sandee• 17 years ago

An easily understood proof of Cantor’s Theorem: http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/prime/articles/cantor_theorem/...

"Take a minute to ponder what this means. Cantor’s Theorem shows that given any set, there is another set which is 'larger' in the special sense of being a bigger kind of infinity. Hence, there can be no 'largest infinity' either! The kinds of infinity are therefore 'infinite!"

jimfl• 17 years ago

Infinity is thus far the most violent idea humanity has come up with.

EAMiller• 17 years ago

I really like the first paragraph of this article, but at this point:

"Art starts to happen when we project these personal maps back out on the world. Each of us has an impulse to express his or her experience of reality."

He lost me. This is the kind of formulaic definition of art you hear all too often. The reason art isn't math is that there is no such formula. Art is contradicts itself. It's messy and evades attempts to pin it down.

aaronblohowiak• 17 years ago

Self-expression, pursuit of aesthetic ideal and refinement of craft are three distinct though frequently overlapping pursuits all called 'art'. The problem with definitions of art is that they usually fail to address the polysemy of the word.

An artist-mathematician illuminates a world of infinite beauty

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