We Live in an Amazing World...

...and I am continually humbled by the things that I don't know.

Today's mindbenders: coprime numbers and Euler's totient function, with some Goldbach's Conjecture thrown in.  (Woo, number theory!)

So, why bring that up?  This is a crafty-beady-knitting-artsy blog, and here I am talking about math.

Well, two reasons.

Look!  A pretty flower!
...A pretty flower whose petal arrangement is connected to the
Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci Series.

Reason the First

Because I'm continually trying to push myself to keep learning.  There are so many beautiful, amazing things in the world...  and I do my best to keep a wide-eyed wonder as I encounter it.  

I might be wrong, but I think it helps me stay creative--make connections that I never made before, seeing things in new and lovely and inspiring ways.

Four petals in a pretty formation...  pretty sure there is a
mathematical reason for that, too. 

Reason the Second

Because, well, math can be beautiful.  

A lot of design, color theory, composition can be traced back to math...  Fractals are the most obvious evidence of this, but similar logic can be found in music and language.  

Music: wave frequencies, ratios, and all sorts of fun
math-y concepts.

Many people, I think, have decided that art and math should never be mixed, cannot be mixed...  But the more I learn, the more I realize that the two are incredibly intertwined.  

Fractal growth-pattern in leaves.
(Granted, a fern would have been a better illustration, but I take
what I can get.)

Fractals can fascinate us with their intricate repeating patterns, music can make our hearts ache with beauty, poetry from ages ago can transcend time and touch our lives today.

Flowers can inspire us to make jewelry.

...And even, in their way, prime numbers can be beautiful.