I’ve long been a fan of mathematics. The secrets there, and the mysteries to solve have always intrigued me. Next month, we’ll encounter “Pi Day”, which is March 14th, because the first three numbers in pi are 3.14. I remember reading a novel one time – a science fiction novel – in which it was revealed that the secret to the whole universe is contained in Pi. I don’t doubt it. Consider a number – an actual number – that can never be represented completely. I have seen contests where people can recite the first 50,000 digits of Pi from memory.
In 2010, it was reported that supercomputers had worked out Pi to 2.7 TRILLION digits! And it just goes on and on. There’s a website at http://www.angio.net/pi/ where you can search the first 200 million digits of Pi for any number combination you choose. 77777, for example, occurs 2,035 times in the first 200 million digits of Pi!
So, Pi is complicated, and that’s impressive – even mind blowing. But consider this – what you are reading now, and the music in your iPod and the pictures on your phone, are ALL defined by a pattern of 1’s, or 0’s. That’s it. TWO choices, made millions or billions of times, in a certain order, makes up what we read, what we watch, what we hear. That’s amazing.
It gets out of hand sometimes, of course. I use teleconference bridges at work fairly often,
and I’m always amused by the complexity of the ID codes to get into a phone conversation – they often run to 9 digits. Am I to believe there are 100 million conference calls using that particular service at that particular moment?
Consider the role of mathematics in astronomy – this is how we know when the next full moon, eclipse, or visit from a comet will come. We have known this for centuries. Picture Kepler deducing and figuring out the Laws of Planetary Motion from observation, incredible insight and math with no calculator, and it’s awesome to behold.
Closer to home, and dearer to those of us who play music, is the number system for chords. Since bluegrassers often change the keys to suit their singing voices, it isn’t always helpful to describe the chords by their letter designation. Instead, we use numbers. Anyone that’s been to a lot of jam sessions has heard the hurried shorthand that occurs right before launching a song: “It’s in Bb, the basic pattern is 1,4,5 but in the chorus it goes to a 4, and then a 2 before the 5, and oh, there’s a 6 minor in there, too – listen for it.”
You may or may not have enjoyed having to learn math in school, and you may or may not have an affinity (or love) for math and numbers, but believe, they’re an integral part of everything you do. You can choose to lead an analog existence, of course, but you will sacrifice some understanding, and turn a blind eye to some incredible elegance and beauty.
