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Re: Math and music
Posted:
Oct 15, 2004 8:38 AM
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In article <ckns9b$57k$1@nntp.itservices.ubc.ca>, Robert Israel
<israel@math.ubc.ca> wrote:
> In article <IPIbd.40134$cJ3.533@fed1read06>, lutonomy <lutonomy@cox.net>
> wrote:
>
> >I remember that movie "A Beautiful Mind" where they show how the high level
> >genius mathematicians don't think in literal "numbers" but rather shapes and
> >contours.
>
> They do no such thing, in that movie (which I guess you don't remember
> very well: it had very little mathematics in it) or any other that I
> know of.
>
> I don't know of any mathematician who thinks in numbers. Mathematicians
> sometimes think _about_ numbers, but they generally think in
> concepts - maybe expressed in words, maybe geometrically, maybe both.
>
I distinctively remember a scene in "A Beautiful Mind" where John Nash
looks at a bunch of numbers and they start glowing and dancing around.
So that refutes your statement.
Another thing the movie demonstrated is how little mathematical
research can progress if there aren't windows around to write on.
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