Monday, March 4, 2019

Math in 17 Syllables

     Counting syllables is an aspect of poetry that often interests math-people.  -- and when Haiku are composed in English, these three-line poems mostly obey the 5-7-5 syllable counts.  Here is a sample from Melbourne mathematician Daniel Mathews.  Lots more of Mathews' Haiku are found here.

Maths haikus are hard
All the words are much too big
Like homeomorphic.

     During the years of this blog, lots of different entries have celebrated the mathy Haiku -- this link leads to the results of a blog-SEARCH using "Haiku." 

2 comments:

  1. We had a thing going in graduate school for number haiku. Numbers that when you said them broke up properly into 5-7-5.
    123,708.06
    one hundred twenty
    three thousand, seven hundred
    eight and six hundredths

    Not up to Mathew's, but a little bit of fun. What's the biggest and smallest you can find?

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  2. Thanks, John, for this! Next time I'm caught in a waiting room, it will be fun to work on the challenge you pose!

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