Mathematics
The best way to arrange variously shaped tiles on a surface can lead to complicated mathematical problems - see tessellation for details. Roger Penrose is a British mathematician who has worked with tiling problems - see Penrose tilings.
The artist M. C. Escher was influenced by Moorish mosaics to begin his investigations into tessellation.
The maze designer and artist Adrian Fisher creates modern mosaic using a system involving three principal shapes (Pyramid, Fin and Mitre).
Read more about this topic: Mosaic
Famous quotes containing the word mathematics:
“Why does man freeze to death trying to reach the North Pole? Why does man drive himself to suffer the steam and heat of the Amazon? Why does he stagger his mind with the mathematics of the sky? Once the question mark has arisen in the human brain the answer must be found, if it takes a hundred years. A thousand years.”
—Walter Reisch (1903–1963)
“The three main medieval points of view regarding universals are designated by historians as realism, conceptualism, and nominalism. Essentially these same three doctrines reappear in twentieth-century surveys of the philosophy of mathematics under the new names logicism, intuitionism, and formalism.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“It is a monstrous thing to force a child to learn Latin or Greek or mathematics on the ground that they are an indispensable gymnastic for the mental powers. It would be monstrous even if it were true.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)