Rhymes and Jokes for Mathy Folks

April 1 is April Fools Day.

April is National Poetry Month.

April is National Mathematics & Statistics Awareness Month.

CELEBRATE with a humorous Mathy Poem!

     An entertaining book by G. Patrick Vennebush --  Math Jokes 4 Mathy Folks (Robert Reed Publishers, 2010) was one part of a widely shared effort to humanize mathematics, to break down its apparent exclusiveness and severity.  (For samples and testimonials, go here.)  Since that 2010 publication, Vennebush (this link leads to info about his background and varied activities) has published additional joke books and offers a blog Math Jokes 4 Mathy Folks  -- an extension of the book-material that includes in its humor some poems; here is a sample:

This rhyme found here at Math Jokes 4 Mathy Folks -- scroll down.

MATHEMATICS and POETRY -- a balancing act!

     Recently I came across this article in Good Times -- a weekly newsletter from Santa Cruz County in California -- an article that features poet Gary Young and his two poet-sons -- one of whom (Cooper Young) chose to major in mathematics.  Quoting Cooper (from the Good Times article -- and referring to his father):

“He didn’t push poetry on me at all,” says Cooper, who recently graduated from Princeton University. “As I was growing up, poetry was always Jake’s interest. I was more of a science/math kind of guy. Then college came around and freshman year, I was looking for a fifth class. I figured I ought to know a little bit about what my father and my brother had dedicated their lives to. So I enrolled in a poetry class. And I really dug it.”

The poetry that I have found by Cooper Young is not mathy -- but it has led me to look back to one of my favorite mathematical poems  -- "To Divine Proportion," by Spanish poet Rafael Alberti (1902-99); I offer it below.

Antiparticular . . . and so on . . .

     Writer and St Mary's University (in Halifax) mathematics professor Robert Dawson enjoys composing both poetry and fiction -- and his work has been included in a number of previous postings in this blog.  Recently he has published several poems in Polar Starlight, a new Canadian magazine of speculative poetry; the poem below, "Antiparticular" -- in which Dawson plays with the meaning of "anti" -- appeared in the June 2022 issue.  (All issues of Polar Starlight are available online at this link.)

         Antiparticular     by Robert Dawson

     Physicists have produced, for many a day,
     Anti-electrons, even antiprotons,
     But nobody has yet, to my dismay,
     Claimed the discovery of antiphotons.
     They move (in theory) at the speed of dark,
     They carry lethargy but have no mass.

Writing a Proof in Verse -- with ChatGPT3

     Academician Punya Mishra (from Arizona State) is active in integrating various topics and learning patterns.  Back in 2020, at this link I featured his poem, "The Mathematical i"  -- and Mishra has recently shared with me some of his explorations with poetry created by artificial intelligence.

     Back in 2010, Mishra wrote a fascinating poem (The Infinity of Primes")  -- a poem that is also a proof -- which begins with these stanzas:

     Over numbers and their combinations if you sit and mull
     You will find that not one of them is uninteresting and dull.
     But it is a certain class of figures that most attention stirs
     Yes, I am speaking of those special ones, the prime numbers.

     Prime numbers are interesting, the mathematician posits,
     ‘Cos they make up all the others, the so-called composites.
     Here’s an imperfect analogy, a simple little working rule,
     Consider the prime to be an atom, then a composite’s a molecule. 

                        . . .               Mishra's complete 17-stanza poem is available here.

Mishra recently explored the the ability of ChatGPT3 to create a proof of the infinity of the set of primes;  The stanzas below offer a start of a proof-attempt; its completion and two other attempts are available at this link.

Poetry found in Scrabblegrams

      Poetry is often shaped by constraints -- syllable counts, patterns of rhythm and rhyme, and others -- and a writing constraint that has come to my attention recently is the "Scrabblegram."  I learned of the Scrabblegram in a blog posting by Marian Christie -- it is a collection of words that uses each of the 100 Scrabble-tile (including the pair of blank tiles, identified as needed) exactly once.

     Christie's blog introduced me to the work of David Cohen who -- using the Twitter handle @dc_scrabblegram -- posts a Scrabblegram daily.  Here is a link to Cohen's website.  And here is a mathy Scrabblegram verse that he posted on Twitter on World Maths Day, March 8, 2023.

A Scrabblegram from David Cohen.

Here is a link to another of David Cohen's Scrabblegrams -- this one features PI (and is also offered as a comment to my March 6 posting).        And here is one about the Fibonacci sequence.               

March is Women's History Month

Learn the history of MATH-WOMEN!

     A recently-released poetry collection that I have been excited to acquire is Jessy Randall's collection,  Mathematics for Ladies:  Poems on Women in Science (London: Goldsmiths Press, 2022).  I first met Jessy Randall's poetry when her poem ‘Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz (1822–1907)’ was published in the August, 2021 issue of Scientific American.

     After a thoughtful "Foreword" by Pippa Goldschmidt, we find 68 poetic snapshots of math women --going back as far as the 12th century and continuing into the the present.  Here is a sample:

CHARLOTTE ANGAS SCOTT (1858-1931)    by Jessy Randall

          When I was at college for mathematics
          I attended Cambridge lectures

          from behind a screen, of course.
          So the male students couldn't see me.

          (I might have distracted them.)   

International Women's Day

     Today, March 8, is International Women's Day -- a day to pause, recognize, and celebrate the achievements and abilities of women (and their equality with men).

In my poetry-stanza below I celebrate Laura Church -- my high school math teacher (in Indiana, PA)  a bold spokesperson for math-for-all back in the 1950s  AND the woman who led me into mathematics.

       Chalk in hand,
       she tosses her book,
       strides across the room,
       excited by trigonometry,
       excited that we,
       restless in our rows,
       caught some of it.
       Flamboyant, silver,
       fearless woman.

The stanza above is part of "The Ones I Best Remember" -- the full poem is available here.

Recognition and celebration of women in mathematics has increased dramatically since my high school days.  On of the important advocates is the Association for Women in Mathematics, founded in 1971, and often mentioned in this blog.  Here is a link to a poem that celebrates AWM.

Celebrate Pi-Day

 3 . 1 4 1 5 9 2 6 5 3  .  .  . 

March 14  -- that is, Pi-Day -- will soon be here.  One of the ways of celebrating  π  is with dessert pastries (pies)  -- but a  π-day  greeting often takes on the challenge of a message in Pilish -- a language whose word-lengths follow the digits of  π -- a challenge that students often enjoy!   An example:

Hug a tree, I shout -- hungering to defend trees and  . . .

FREE MINDS write and share . . .

     Last weekend I attended a very special event at Live Garra Theatre in Silver Spring -- an event featuring poetry and drama from ascending citizens -- described in the image below.

Two organizations that endeavor to improve the lives of incarcerated and recently incarcerated persons are The Free Minds Book Club and Freedom Reads libraries. 

Is a proof the opposite of a poem?

      One of the valuable online sources from the MAA (Mathematical Association of America) is the Math Values blog -- found at this link -- a blog that explores COMMUNICATION, COMMUNITY, INCLUSIVITY, and TEACHING and LEARNING.  Using the SEARCH feature, I entered "poetry" and found this variety of resources -- including mention of the Steven Strogatz Prize for Math Communication -- SHARE YOUR LOVE OF MATH WITH THE WORLD -- a contest for high school students with deadline April 28, 2023.  Entry categories include Art, Audio, Performance, Social Media, Video, and Writing.  Guidelines are available here.

     Back in June, 2021 at this link I shared a portion of the poem by Julia Schanen that won in the Writing category that year.  It's second line is the title of this blog posting -- and the complete poem is available here.  A 2022 Strogatz winner was Wyeth Renwick -- and this blog posting features his poem.

     I close with two of my favorite lines of poetry:

        The Secret Sits     by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

               We dance around in a ring and suppose,
               But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.