John Butcher interviews
Ruby Cheng-pei Chen, a talented
musician who plays both the traditional Chinese Ku-Cheng and Western
instruments, internationally in addition to graduating with an
M.Sc. in numerical analysis and pursuing a career in management
in Taiwan.
It's unusual to find a student who has studied both music and mathematics to the high level that you have. Which was your first love?
Music. When I was at high school, I never thought I would do a degree in mathematics at all, but I have always studied music and mathematics, so naturally I waited to the Music Department and while I was doing those papers, I took up one paper - 162 - Introduction to Applied Mathematics. Something in there really caught my eye. Caught my interest. Maybe people say it was hard and maybe because it was linked with computers, but right from the start, listened to the content very carefully and I found it really analytical because we used mathematical modelling and those methods really interested me how they could approach a problem and a function and end up having the assumptions working at all.
So the important thing is to apply mathematics to physical and other problems - biological problems?
Yes!
And the interesting thing is that mathematics looks abstract but is actually useful to discover things about scientific questions?
Yes! This actually opened my eyes, changed my thoughts about mathematics - totally. That's why after I finished music I looked for papers ...
That was a Bachelor of Music?
Yes ... and I looked for papers linked with mathematical modelling and also programming and gradually I was becoming a numerical analyst. An analysis student.
And that's what you did your Master's degree in, your thesis isn't it?
Yes.
Let's come back a bit. Before you went to high school, you went to primary school in Taiwan ... is that right?
Yes.
Now was music a very big part of your primary school?
No. All the eduction there are more interested in things like mathematics, Chinese, English, history. These are the important subjects everyone's studying for. And yes we o have music classes and physical education classes, but usually, if the teacher is really serious about education, they say "Oh this is music class but we are just going to do mathematics"
Many people believe that in this country, we don't give enough emphasis to science and mathematics, but it's the opposite perhaps in Taiwan.
Yes.
So you normally play both Western and Eastern music?
Yes I learned my primary instrument in Taiwan, you know in the Chinese harp.
What's
the Chinese name for that?
Ku-Cheng for ancient.
Coming back to your advanced level in mathematics - you first came into computational methods in the 162 modelling course and eventually you decided to specialize in your Master's degree in numerical mathematics. Can you tell me something about the work you did for your M.Sc. your thesis ...
The thesis I did was mainly on trees and how ...
How can trees have anything to do with mathematics?
Trees are graphical representations of numerical data ... classical representations of ...
Different terms of a numerical approximation?
Yes and we wrote it in the calculus form and it was for me a lot easier to understand this in the trees form. Not only easier but it saved a lot of work. To have done the calculus side and understand everything on the calculus side ... it was important to understand it as part of the perspective, but once you understand it, when you came to trees and represent it in the tree form it was just like using hand writing and the computer automatic voice recording ...
So a picture represents a lot of information ...
Yes it does.
I think you mentioned earlier that you like computing and in your thesis you did numerical calculations as well, so tell me how you feel about computing these days ...
For me now every day I use computers a lot ... I don't need to use a lot of programming language, as I was doing in my thesis but I use computers every day to check my e-mails and have stopped writing using pens ...
Once you finished your masters degree, I have the feeling you took a complete break from mathematics for a while can you tell me about that year since you did mathematics as a serious part of your life ...
I just needed a break from study because of probably 21 years all involved in education ... after finishing my M.Sc. I thought "I need to go somewhere" and I decided because I had been away from music for a few years to go back to music and get some inspirations of what I should do with my life ... I mean it's not just music ... the way I have to perform it physically but refreshment of my ear for the melodies or whatever ... it was a totally different experience ... I though myself I was very brave ... If I turned back time again now, I probably wouldn't do it, but it was really great ... what was good about where I went was that everything was really different between New Zealand, Taiwan and Europe - a totally different atmosphere - cultural change - the air breathes differently - you learned to look at people and you learned a lot sometimes I thought "I'm so naive" ...
I like to believe that even if someone doesn't spend the rest of their life doing mathematics, it still has left some deep impression on them ... that it's really become part of their live to some extent ...
Yes for me mathematics has always been part of my life ... and I'm still using maths even though I'm not really doing any more study ... I don't thin there are really any boundaries ... some people might say there are boundaries between music and mathematics, boundaries between mathematics and management whatever, but to me I look at them like its all one and I don;t divide when I'm using music and when I'm using mathematics, to me it's part of me anyway. I'm using them all the time and I'm sure with numerical analysis even though I'm not using the methods that other parts like how to analyse something ... I'm using that kind of perspective as well in the management part in Taiwan, so those things I learned while I was studying, are still useful in my life, so its different skills, while I was studying mathematics, it wasn't just mathematics and while I was studying music, it wasn't just music ... it just amazes me how those studies have no boundaries ... so if someone asks me "Are you using mathematics right now?" I just say "Yes" because if they that "That's not mathematics" I'd have stop everything I do right now and just be a mathematical teacher