Sublime Numbers: The Beauty of Math
SEPT. 22, 2013
To the Editor:
Re “How to Fall in Love With Math” (Op-Ed, Sept. 16):
I read Manil Suri’s essay with great pleasure, and I especially appreciated his lament that more people aren’t exposed to “mathematical beauty.”
My own experience has been that in doing mathematics, the most important thing is one’s aesthetic sense: everything is terribly abstract, and one’s ability to sense patterns, design and structure is all one can truly rely on in pursuit of understanding, always looking for a proof that is elegant.
That beauty is critical in this creative process is attested to by Gödel and Einstein, who both believed that something mathematical must be beautiful to be true.
KEN McALOON
South Dennis, Mass., Sept. 17, 2013
The writer is chief scientist of a software company, responsible for mathematical optimization algorithms.
To the Editor:
Regarding Manil Suri’s essay, I am afraid that some may view this as another salvo in the continuing debate between pure and applied mathematicians (Mr. Suri advocates for an emphasis on pure mathematics).
This debate has implications for the way mathematics is taught in our schools. I believe that this distinction between the beauty of mathematical structures and the usefulness of mathematics to model physical and social phenomena is a false dichotomy.
Consider Mr. Suri’s example of fractals. Benoit Mandelbrot is credited with developing this branch of math, which creates the beautiful geometric images described in the article. But Mr. Mandelbrot was also an economist who applied this mathematics to help us understand the dynamics of market pricing systems.