Math is Love. Math is Life.

Did you know that Plato is thought to have identified 5 regular symmetrical 3-dimensional shapes (now known as the Platonic Solids)? These shapes are the tetrahedron (4 regular triangles), the octahedron (8 triangles), the icosahedron (20 triangles), the cube, and the dodecahedron (12 Pentagons). These shapes also had "elements." The tetrahedron represents fire, the octahedron represents air, the icosahedron represents water, the cube represents earth, the dodecahedron represents "the god used for arranging the constellations on the whole heavens," (that one is a bit odd).

HE ALSO PRACTICED GEOMETRIC CONSTRUCTIONS (Compass + Straight Edge)

Guys, this is amazing! Here is a link to Plato justifying his love of mathematics in the Republic http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Extras/Plato_on_mathematics.html

Here is my favorite excerpt from this passage of the republic (Highlighting my favorite quotes):

'Now, suppose a person were to say to them, Glaucon, "O my friends, what are these wonderful numbers about which you are reasoning, in which, as you say, there are constituent units, such as you demand, and each unit is equal to every other, invariable, and not divisible into parts," - what would they answer?'

'They would answer, as I should think, that they were speaking of those numbers which can only be realised in thought, and there is no other way of handling them.'

'Then you see,' I pointed out to him, 'that this knowledge may be truly called necessary, requiring the mind, as it clearly does, to use pure intelligence in the attainment of pure truth?'

'Yes; that is the effect of it,' he agreed.

'And here is another point, that those who have a natural talent for calculation are generally quick at every other kind of knowledge; and even the slow-witted if they have had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than they would otherwise have been.'

'Very true,' he said.

'And indeed, you will not easily find a more difficult study, which come harder to those who learn and practice it.'

'You will not.'

'And, for all these reasons, arithmetic is a kind of knowledge in which the brightest citizens should be trained, and which must not be given up.'

'I agree.'

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Did I mention that I also LOVE math?