What Fitted Wardrobes can teach us about Music and Language (No, Really!)

Every piece of bespoke bedroom furniture we build and install is unique. The final product is assembled from many discrete parts, for each of which the customer will have many options to choose between. Mathematically, this is known as a finite combinatorial system. Two other examples of finite combinatorial systems are music and language. The analogy of wardrobe construction can teach us a lot about these fundamentally human topics.

The Similarities

Wardrobes are constructed from the individual components that you select and then combined to your specifications by our workshop team. Sentences are constructed from a lexicon of some 20,000 learnt words and a few innate rules for their combination. Similarly, melodies are formed from a handful of notes and some information on harmony and tempo. From a finite resource, the choices we make in combination generate a plethora of different outcomes: your perfect wardrobe, an original sentence, a brand new tune.

The Differences

With wardrobes, the number of possible combinations of sizes, colours and features is vast (multiplying out the options quickly takes you into big numbers) but it is not infinite. Language and music, however, have a property that makes the number of sentences and melodies truly infinite. Mathematicians call this property ‘recursion’.

Recursion

One of the combination options for sentence and melody generation is that both may include examples of themselves. A series of notes making up a melody can be included as a motif in a longer melody. Any sentence can be extended and still make sense. The same could be true of wardrobes, but eventually the walls of the bedroom get in the way. 

If you would like a truly unique piece of bedroom or office furniture that has been custom made in our Norwich workshop to fit your space, then drop into one of showrooms in Norwich or Cambridge for a chat with our sales team or call us on 01603 417577.

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