nsphere

Yeah me too. I can't wait to rewrite our code base in Java (not even being sarcastic), but at least we will be able to make our own objects and have recursion! Yay!

This is charge shift bonding. I did several computational research projects on this in undergrad. It's nice to finally see this reaching the media.

They look at fractals and spirals and enjoy seeing the pretty pictures with all the symmetry and colors. However when an explanation of how the series is generated and how it can vary is presented, interest is feigned and the core concepts still elude them. It's almost as if they don't like getting their hands dirty in a different medium.

I completely agree! By other's perspectives my hardest semester was when I took PDEs, Geometry Space-time (Minkowski), Algorithms, P-chem (Quantum Mechanics), and Analysis. However there was so much over lap with all the materials and topics. A few weeks after midterms all the course work just fit together like a 100 piece puzzle.

Exactly! With the exception that most of the artist's I've conversed with don't like the word "formula", but liberally us the word "process". Also anyone is Science seems to favor "methods". They all are talking about the same activity of concentrating on an action their passionate about. Language can be a funny thing.

Check out this book as well.

http://amzn.com/039306204X

"There is such breathtaking depth and heartbreaking beauty in this ancient art form. How ironic that people dismiss mathematics as the antithesis of creativity. They are missing out on an art form older than any book, more profound than any poem, and more abstract than any abstract. And it is school that has done this! What a sad endless cycle of innocent teachers inflicting damage upon innocent students. We could all be having so much more fun."

As a Mathematician I've always identified as a creative person, yet struggle to convince "artsy" persons that what I do is creative. As soon as I utter the word math they convulse and shutter as if they were afflicted with a PTSD flashback. I try explaining what the idea involves and draw a diagram or three, but all they do is just nod and say "yeah, yup, okay.." Are the ideas of math that inaccessible to the general population when compared to a work of Art?