Category Archives for Math
The Sacrament of the Last Supper – Salvador Dali
I’ve never seen this Dali painting before! Crazy. It’s like hearing a hit song by one of your favorite bands, that you somehow missed over the years. The golden ratio abounds in this painting. It’s in the table, the pentagonal … Continue reading
You said it, brother…
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=255285
Astronomical
What a tremendous waste of paper…cool idea though, and beautifully executed. Recycle? http://mishka.lockandhenner.com/blog/?cat=45
Tool’s Into Math
Or at least their music would seem to suggest as such… Here’s a link to an article about how the Fibonacci sequence figures prominently in the album Lateralus, by Tool. http://www.upvenue.com/music-news/blog-headline/1142/fibonacci-in-tool-s-lateralus.html This is definitely one my favorite albums of … Continue reading
What is four notes then?
Four notes is also a chord. The addition of a fourth note just changes the value of the chord, and introduces the need for more accurate taxonomy. It adds complexity. We’ve talked about how chord tones can be distinguished from … Continue reading
Three Notes Is A Chord
When three different notes are sounding simultaneously they create the first instance of a chord. Chords can have many more than just three notes, but I would argue that they may have no less than three. Two notes is afterall … Continue reading
Intervals
An interval of space is a length. An interval of time is a duration. An interval of pitch in Western music theory is rather unimaginatively called an “interval.” Intervals are a way to compare the “space” between two notes. Let’s … Continue reading
A Single Note
What is a note? A note is actually a multidimensional thing. It has both pitch and duration. It’s like how a vector has direction, and magnitude. The magnitude might be zero, but it’s there. In the case of a … Continue reading
First Prismatic Landscape Mural
Just completed a painting. It’s a mural about eleven feet tall and twenty something feet long. I haven’t measured the length. It just looks about twice as long as the height. It’s a landscape. Or it’s not. Whichever’s funnier. Acrylic … Continue reading
Expressing Sounds with Color
I’ve got this idea, but I’m not exactly sure of how to pull it off logistically. I want to turn the sound of two instruments playing single notes simultaneously into a visual landscape, and I want to build it out … Continue reading
Y u no…?
Damn you chain rule!
sin b/ tan b = cos by
This is math and art…kinda. right? The expression on his face is priceless. So there’s this… Trigonometric identity: sin x = tan x cos x Therefore, sin x = tan x cos x which means… sin x = … Continue reading
Songs I Can Do…expressed as sets :o
Recently I got out the old guitar, for singin’ with, and went over some old tunes I used to know. As I dusted off the cob webs I found more little jewels I used to own<?>. Anyway, here’s a running … Continue reading
How to prove the quadratic formula, by completing the square
You may be familiar with completing the square. If so, skip down a bit till you see a blue word. To prove the quadratic equation by completing the square, we must first know how to complete the square. Consider (x … Continue reading
Art, Math, Music: Connected~ Who knew!? This guy.
Turns out this Benno Moiseiwitsch guy was pretty amazing. This is his explication on why art, math, and music are all actually the same thing. Very interesting stuff.
A Brief History of Infinity – A Paradox
A good little read. This book taught me a lot of things about set theory and Georg Cantor. It also taught me about a very interesting paradox within set theory, that was identified by Bertrand Russell. It goes something like this. … Continue reading
Triangle Paradox
My friend Shi introduced me to this problem. When the answer dawns on your understanding, you feel ridiculous.
Say “maths” not “math.”
If you want to sound like you know what you’re talking about, apparently you have to say “maths” instead of “math.” Go figure. Tell me what you get.
The Necessity of Imaginary Numbers
Today’s mathy thing is about simple factoring. When you take algebra in high school they tell you about how a2 - b2 can be factored to equal (a + b)(a – b), but that a2 + b2 is prime and cannot be factored. This … Continue reading
The Book of Proof
A very bright, young intern at my office named Zac turned me onto this book. It’s free in .pdf format for all to enjoy. So far it seems to be helping me speak the language of math more. Whenever I … Continue reading