“An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God.” — Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920) The brilliant young Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, was a prodigy whose deep mathematical insights continue to thrill number theorists a century later. His first letter to English mathematician G. H. …

The distribution of interval-related data in Coltrane’s famous solo is a wonderful example of a power-law in action — “When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hang-ups.” — John Coltrane (1926–1967) John Coltrane's improvisation on his composition “Giant Steps,” first recorded in 1959, stands out as one of the seminal recordings in…

“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the…

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” ― Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) Background For 1500 years, mathematicians from many cultures have explored the patterns and relationships found in what we now, in the West, refer to as Pascal’s triangle. Named posthumously for the French…

“Nature is pleased with simplicity.” — Isaac Newton (1643–1727) I t can often be a fun exercise to figure out how to prove something that is obviously true. For instance, no one doubts that π is greater than e. …

“Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.” — Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716) The connections between mathematics and music run deep. The subjects can be thought of as cosmic twins, born out of a tantalizing mixture of order and disorder…

“All the truths of mathematics are linked to each other, and all means of discovering them are equally admissible.” — Adrien-Marie Legendre (1752–1833) At the Heart of Growth The number e, also known as Euler’s number or the base of the natural logarithm, pops up whenever we examine continuous rates of growth (or decay) that…

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” ― Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) Years ago when I was at the Berklee College of Music, on Sundays, radio stations carried the then obligatory early morning religious programming. For WBUR (Boston University Radio), this consisted of…

A patent from 1998 offers a solution to the expanding epidemic of disinformation and outright fakery. — It’s a maxim from a bygone era — “Seeing is believing.” …