Sharjah24: Visitors to the 15th Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival (SCRF) on Thursday were introduced to the fascinating bridge between maths and music at an interactive panel discussion that explored how children could learn to correlate with the two different realms.

The session moderated by Mania Suwaid on the festival’s cultural forum saw Malaysian children’s author Ying Ying Ng and Moroccan mathematics professor Aziz Afrazin speak at length about integrating the realms of music and mathematics for students.

“As a teacher of mathematics, I include music whenever an opportunity arises,” said Dr Afrazin who teaches maths at Morocco’s University Sultan Moulay Slimane. 

“In engineering, I often try using the musical scale to teach seemingly complex topics like probability. I also perceive music as a good medium to understand certain aspects of statistics even. Both maths and music are connected by beauty, abstraction and universality. I may not speak your language but we both will understand the language of music as well as mathematics. Both are universal, everyone understands.”

The discussion further delved into what sets music apart from mathematics in this context.

“Music extends beyond maths as it enhances emotional qualities and when you add dynamics, performances. Music has a taste, style and colour of its own. Music, for me, can represent maths in arts,” said Ying Ying Ng, the executive director of Pocostudio, a Kuala Lumpur based music education book publisher and an author of children’s books. 

“In teaching music, we engage in a lot of activities and that’s because we want children to understand mathematics as well through music. We want them to feel it through the activities and not just [through writing] on paper. Both music and maths share patterns and symmetries [we often don’t see].”

The duo then went on to explore the similarities and differences between the two disciplines, and how they intersect in terms of structure, patterns, and creative expression.

The 12-day festival, themed 'Once Upon a Hero', will feature a diverse array of over 1,500 cultural, creative, and edutainment activities led by 265 esteemed guests representing 25 countries, alongside the participation of 186 publishers from 20 nations.