I'm skeptical. I was unfamiliar with the garden's laout, so I made a quick trip to... Google to get a picture. I don't really see what they are talking about at all. In fact, I would imagine there is a pretty high statistical probability that you could find any shape you wished expressed in the garden, thus justifying any preconceived idea as to what makes it so "zen."

Which may be the point in the first place.

Hmm the interesting thing might be that the perfect ZEN garden, is one that does not exist. This whole research feels a bit strange. ; )

This reminds me of somethign a read about a project by a Stanford U. scientist to create the ultimate music classification tool. He created a precise and deep taxonomy which analyzed everything from tempo to key ... even instrumentaion. Yes, yes ... but is the song any good? How do you determine that with mathematics?

Keith Richards once said that no matter how good a synthesizer gets at imitating a piano or string section ... you can always tell that there's no "breath" in it. I feel the same may be true about a mathematically-designed Zen garden.

Very zen baby. What does zen mean to you? it's a word that I don't know much about and it suggests 'balanced' to me. I'm not into Tai chi, or Feng shui or ying and yang.