Going nuts with publishing posts today...

The music theory PhD program at UCSB requires 8 units outside of the music department. An average course is 4 units. These can technically be anything, as long as your advisor is convinced of its relationship, however tentative, to your field of study. So I decide to revisit my mathematical roots, dessicated as they are, and take an intro. to group theory course.

Since I was a bit late in deciding which course to take, I arrived with a bit of trepidation to my first group theory class with homework in hand. Was soon relieved that the "introduction" wasn't a placebo modifier. I can do math! Sort of. As I was spacing out during lecture (the teacher was covering a lot of stuff I had done before), I realized that despite my aversion to combining high level math and high level music theory, I had to admit the draw of using non-traditional methodologies. There's a wealth of information in group theory already. It is practically waiting for someone to draw an analogy between mathematical and musical groups (and certainly such parallels exist). And people have, of course, in wonderful and often times completely extreme ways.

Which brings me to the question I've been pondering for the past week: how are mathematical concepts used in the humanities? I suppose my real interest is in how methodologies are borrowed and adapted from one field to another but right now, I'm interested in math. The connections from math to computer science or physics is more straight forward than the connection from math to music theory. But I doubt I'd be aware of the latter connection were I not a music theorist. So what other humanities use maths? History or Art and Architecture? Egyptology? College of Creative Studies?