Literary Math

This is just gorgeous; I hope the excerpt shows well.  Analyzing language in metabooks.  And as they say in the math books--This is intuitively obvious to the most casual of observers; the proof is left to the student.

from "The meta book and size-dependent properties of written language"
in The New Journal of Physics
Sebastian Bernhardsson1, Luis Enrique Correa da Rocha and Petter Minnhagen
The second assumption (equation (3)), with γ > 1, gives the relation
Equation (7)
The last case in equation (7) (β < 1) can be disregarded as impossible since γ needs to be smaller than one for the integral to be positive, which means that α is also negative. This would give a book where the number of different words decreases as a function of the total number of words.
I have to admit to being very partial to the intrinsic beauty of the integral symbol--and indeed to much of the symbology of mathematics in general.  Even when I don't fully comprehend the mathematics being expressed, I can ponder pages that look like this for hours on end, stunned simply by the gorgeous nature of the typography.  Yes, I love words and I love symbols and I love language both logos and mathematica.  (That last is also a reference to one of my favorite program suites of all time.)

Found via Conversational Reading.

Comments

  1. Jessie CartyDecember 24, 2009 at 6:59 PM

    i love pulling math and science into literature but this is way over my head! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. StevenDecember 26, 2009 at 9:06 AM

    Dear Jessie,

    Thank you for stopping by and leaving a comment. While I could not solve the equations shown, I have a sense of what it is they are designed to do--so I'm in the same boat you are in. However, I just think the typography has a kind of beauty that you seldom see elsewhere--the ornate and elaborate symbols that are part of the language of mathematics are just gorgeous.

    Thank you for taking the time to stop by and comment!

    shalom,

    Steven

    ReplyDelete

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