What more is there to mathematics than sums?
...across continents and through time. It is what links ancient scholars and medieval merchants, astronauts and artists, peasants and presidents. It is not English, French or Greek. If we are well versed in this language of numbers, it can help us make important decisions and perform everyday tasks. Mathematics can help us to shop wisely, buy the right insurance, remodel a home within a budget and even understand population growth. Mathematics is the only language shared by all human beings regardless of culture, religion, or gender. Pi is still 3.14159 regardless of what country you are in. Adding up the cost of a basket full of groceries involves the same math process regardless of whether the total is expressed in dollars, rubles, or yen. With this universal language, all of us, no matter what our unit of exchange, are likely to arrive at mathematical results the same way. With this language we can understand the forces of planetary motion, discover cures for catastrophic diseases, or calculate the distance from Boston to Bangkok. We can make chocolate chip cookies or save money for retirement. We can build computers and transfer information across the globe. We can explain mysteries of the universe and even the secrets of DNA. An artist inspired by mathematics has even portrayed representation of this mathematical phenomenon. Maurits Cornelis Escher, who was born in Leeuwarden, Holland in 1898, created unique and fascinating works of art that explore and exhibit a wide range of mathematical ideas. Based on self-reference and information, he has created a piece entitled “Fish and Scales”, in which the woodcut describes not only fish but all organisms, for although we are not built, at least physically, from small copies of ourselves, in an information-theoretic sense we are indeed built in just such a way, for every cell of our body carries the complete information describing the entire creature, in the form of DNA. Defining such ...