Music, like math, is everywhere, if only one knows where to look, a visiting professor told a packed crowd in Elon University’s Whitley Auditorium Monday night.
The connection between the two seemingly separate fields reinforces the value of a liberal arts education, according to the evening’s keynote speaker, Dave Kung, professor of mathematics at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
"The key component of any liberal arts education is the ability to see relationships with two different subjects,” Kung said. “I hope that the students can take what they’ve learned here and apply it to all the areas of their academia."
Throughout the evening, part of the North Carolina annual regional meeting of the Mathematical Association of America, Kung, a violinist of 39 years, argued that mathematics and music are eerily similar.
Kung has made an academic career off proving math’s ties to music, from simplifying a complex formula that predicts the sound of a violin pluck to performing tunes on the most unexpected of instruments.
The Department of Math and Statistics first applied to host the yearly meeting more than a year ago, and it’s required a lot of planning in-between, according to Ayesha Delpish, department chair and associate professor of statistics.
The planning paid off in a robust turnout, as students and faculty from around the state flocked to campus, coming from schools such as Duke University, Wake Forrest University and Davidson College. With them, many students brought research papers and posters covered in math-related charts, graphs and formulas of all kinds.
“I think it’s good that other students can see what their peers are doing in research,” Delpish said. “By actually looking at the research, students can see the practicality in their work and hopefully motivate them to continue.”
To Kung, an understanding of music and math matters not only in research fields, but also in everyday life.
Even in commonplace household objects.
The mathematician-musician hybrid brought a tube from a hardware store and played “Taps” by simply waving it around his head. He said the trick works because every tube is similarly shaped — PVC pipe to clarinet.
“The same mathematics used to predict quantum mechanics is used in music,” Kung said. “There is an entire symphony in a single note. As Henri Poincare [an influential French Renaissance man] said, ‘Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.’ This subject is applicable everywhere.”
Another lead organizer, Chad Awtrey, assistant professor of mathematics, said he hopes the subject will gain more of a popular appeal.
“I hope that students can be captured by the beauty of math,” Awtrey said. “I hope that this can give a branding to math and help people realize it's not dry. If people get more interested in it, we can have more breakthrough discoveries in mathematics like we would in biology or chemistry."