The Music of Mathematics

“The enchantment of rhythm is obviously felt in music, the rhythm which is inherent in the notes and their groupings. It is the magic of mathematics, this rhythm which is in the heart of all creation, which moves in the atom and in its different measures fashions gold and lead, the rose and the thorn, the sun and the planets, the variety and vicissitudes of man's history. These are the dance steps of numbers in the arena of time and space, which weave the maya of appearance, the incessant flow of changes that ever is and is not.

What we know as intellectual truth, is that also not a perfect rhythm of the relationship of facts that produce a sense of convincingness to a person who somehow feels that he knows the truth? … We believe any fact to be true because of a harmony, a rhythm in reason, the process of which analyzable by the logic of mathematics. “

- Rabindranath Tagore

Love poetry for the nerdy

For all those who think mathematics cannot be romantic

I fear that I will always be
A lonely number like root three

The three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three

As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed


Originally writtn by David Feinberg, a computer science teacher.