Ian Stewart’s books have really caught my attention nowadays.

After reading his book, " Letters to a

Young Mathematician", I gulped "Nature’s Numbers". The book is all about seeing nature from a
mathematician’s POV.

The book starts off with an introduction of nature and patterns. Patterns of form and Patterns of
movement are so widespread in the nature that it is difficult not to observe them. Ripples in the pond,
Stripes on Zebra tiger, movement of horses, elephants, mammals all happen based on a pattern. Patterns
posses beauty as well as utility. If one were to study the patterns, it would be the best thing to leverage
those patterns in our daily life applications. When such a complicated creature like Nature can work with
a pattern, it is certain that Pattern would work for a less complex purpose driven application.

Patterns are basically numerical patterns, geometric patterns, and movement (translation, rotation,
reflection) patterns. A mathematician’s instinct is to structure the process of understanding by seeking
generalities that cut across various sub divisions.A lot of physics proceeded with out the any major
advances in the mathematical world. For 200 years, calculus was in a different position. It was being used
with great success in Physics But the mathematicians were really concerned about what it really meant.
Thus there is a fundamental difference in the way of thinking of a mathematician. They tend to ask WHY
rather than HOW. HOW related questions are left to domain experts, be it physicists , chemists, scientists
etc Mathematicians concentrate on WHY and that opens a whole set of areas for people to work on
HOWs. For example snail develops a spiral shell, mathematician will be interested in the ways a spiral is
formed whereas how the snail makes the shell is matter of genetics / chemistry.

Is Mathematics about numbers, real , complex , functions, transformations, proofs, theorems etc..No ,
Math is about story telling. If you can take a natural phenomenon / application and can a tell an effective
story using some tools, that is what Math is all about

There is a chapter titled "From Violins to Videos", which is a beautiful summarization of the events
starting from the purposeless study of 1d strings on a violin to a very practical device tv. A lot of
physicists and mathematicians played a role in cracking the 1d wave equation of a violin string. jean le
rond d’alemert , euler, bernoulli all were instrumental in bringing about the solution for 1d waves. This
was extended to the vibrations of the surface of the drum which is a 2d. Finally it showed up in the areas
of Electricity and Magnetism. Michael Faraday and subsequently Maxwell came up with electromagnetic
forces which was a giant leap in the advancement of scientific understanding. Visible electromagnetic
waves with different frequencies produce different colors.
The book also deals with the pattern of movement. One complete chapter is dedicated to gait analysis
where trot, pace, bound, walk, rotary, gallop, traverse gallop and canter is analyzed.

Chapter 8 titled – "Do Dice Play God ?" is my favorite chapter of the book. It starts off by introducing a
concept called phase space which is nothing but a solution space that is obtained based on the initial
conditions. The chapter’s main theme is that random movements at the microscopic level can result in
deterministic movements at the macroscopic level. Also simple cause results in complex effects. One
superb example that’s given to justify the theme is the half life period. One can never say that at an
instant a particular atom will disintegrate or not, but one can always calculate half life period of an
elements. So, one knows the half life of an elements, with out knowing which half will disintegrate..Its
like the famous ad saying, I know my marketing ad budget gets me results but I do not know which half.

The last chapter is collection of 3 case studies – One , water from a tap , Two , a simulated artificial
ecology example, and the final one is that of petals in various flowers. Each of the case studies is a gem
that goes on tell that mathematical complexity results in simple patterns and it is well worth
understanding mathematical complexity , for it is such study that creates a better understanding of
nature’s patterns.