Is Math a Form of Art?

Math and science use different parts of the brain. Also, math is absolute and usually has a single answer. However, a friend of mine has told me of math problems where the resulting inetger is somehow subjective and more than one answer could be right. All in all, I would say they are two different things though one cannot exist without the other. Maybe I'm not making sense but that's just the ways it is.

As you can see, I'm not a math major.

I like the surprises of math and obversely it's constants.... like if you want to know the square of any number you can either multiply it (6x6) or you can add the first odd integers of that same number. 1 +3+5+7+9+11
Six integers equal to 6x6 (36) and it works no matter what the number you pick. Wanna know what 1332 squared is? Add up the first 1332 odd integers and you will get 1774224. Useful ?? No. Fascinating??? yahuh!!

I think that calculators take the surprise away when you try to find the square root of 1332(which really has no real root).
1+3+5+7+9+11+13+15+17...whew, I am pooped!

You are not finding the root, just the square. I told it wasn't useful or quick.

Quick what's eleven squared?

1+3+5+7+9+11+13+15+17+19+21 =

There's a lot of creativity in math.

In school, when I had no idea how to do a math problem on a test, I'd just BS my way through it by fiddling with the numbers this way and that.

There's always more than one way to approach a problem, and many times I could get partial credit for randomly shuffling things around until they just looked nice.

In math you can find wonder and beauty.
There must be tremendous quantity of beatiful facts yet to be noticed.

A graph is worth a thousand numbers...

Sometimes more.

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I'd say, no. Pure math is not art... science, not art.

But the human eye is drawn to patterns, and patterns can be found in mathematics. Consider fractals... (there, someone had to say it.)

At the heart, fractals are graphical representations of mathamtical formulae. Pretty cold description. The 'art' comes from choices made of what basic formula, how to tweak the variables, presentation and color choices... etc. etc. Edward Tufte stuff.

It's like saying that, even though a painting is art, a tube of paint is not.

Math is neither art nor science. It is a language.

Any language, for example English, can be used for art (poetry), science, lists of facts, jokes or philosophy.

Math also has many uses. From incredibly beautiful fractals and the foundation of music. to dry lists and facts, to philosophical meanderings of the nature of things.

Yes, math is a language ... a tool with many uses. Math provides a structure and a set of nouns and verbs.

The human mind uses it to create things of great truth and beauty.

I'll buy that, Brown.

Sat through a gorgeous lecture a couple of months back. Told the story of Genesis using the exponential function and its division into and reconstitution from trigonometric functions and...

Quite elegant, it was. All in the language of math. Was it art? I think so, but I'm not married to that judgment. More importantly, it simply was.

The exponential function is a structure which yields trigonometric functions, and trigonometric functions are structure which in turn yields the exponential function. A differential equation also can define the exponential function, and the equation is characterized as a property of the exponential function. There is no end in this circle of arguments. It dwells in the world of ideals and independent of the physical world.

So beautiful! It just brings tears to my eyes.

And can be applied very powerfully to real-world problems. It's a good language...

Enjoying the responses to Math/Art?
But I also think it opens up a can of worms.

Problem is the definition of "Art" not Math.
It is almost impossible to get an agreement on " what is art?"
Historically all painting, sculpture, medicine, plays, etc. were called art. Then, I believe, in the 17th century
the word art was split in two and became the "fine arts"
and the "practical arts" which by the way includes "the "art of politics."

So, today, we don't say "the medical artist who operated on me is very good."

On the other hand, there are many people who refuse to call an abtract painting "art."

I'm not going into depth on this, I just want to fuzzy the waters.

Art without math has no sequence or perspective.

Oddly, Pollock's abstract work can be very nicely quantified by chaos coefficients (or some such -- I know nothing about the theory). If I'm remembering the article correctly, early on, his work had a coefficient just below what you would find in nature, and got increasing complicated as time went by. By the time of his death, the coefficient was considerably greater than what you'd find in nature. It may mean something, it may mean nothing. Personally, I could give a rip about his paintings, but it was an interesting article.

patiodog, Chaos is part of nature.

Which was why the article was so interesting! All about how we are generally comfortable with a certain level of chaos in our visual field, and that's a level we tend to find when all is well-and-good in nature. However, the coefficient increases when the normal patterns of breeze across high grass are disrupted (by a stalking predator, let's say) or when a lake is whipped up by a fierce wind. Pollack started his paint spattering at a level of chaos that (according to the calculations, anyway) should be downright sleep inducing, and finished his career making patterns that should be (again, according to the calculations) disturbing. Me -- well, I see a bunch of paint...

Well, math does, for me, involve beauty, creativity, and a sense of wonder, which are qualities also associated with art.

Because my background is in a scientific subject, I've seen a lot of math, and I always considered it exceptionally beautiful, although I'd be hard pressed to say exactly why. That's how I've always felt about math, though - even, I think, when I was a small child being taught arithmetic. I find a sort of beauty, for example, in its absolute, uncompromising nature. An equation seems to say to me, "I have secrets, and if you're good enough, I'll tell them to you.

Creativity can definitely play a role in math, because when you solve a math problem, unless it is one which you've been told how to solve, in some cases there are really no guidelines at all for how to proceed, and you have to apply creativity to think of what might cause some equation to reveal its secrets.

Also, for me, as with art, there is a sense of wonder connected with it. For me the sense of wonder connected with math springs partially from my belief that it enables you to understand the physical world. I feel that when I learn about math, I am learning the universe's secrets.