Geometry of Kindness . . . Power of a Circle

      Found on Facebook recently -- this snapshot of my syllable-count triangle from an earlier blog posting  . . . I like the way that choosing words that conform to a pattern stimulates my thoughts.

From a blog posting back in 2018

Black History Month Celebrates Math Women

     Black mathematicians and female mathematicians often have not been given the credit they deserve -- and I have been delighted to find this website that features eleven famous African-American mathematicians --  six of which are women.   This website celebrates: 

2.) Fern Hunt (1948-   )     Fern Hunt is best known for her work in applied mathematics and mathematical biology. Throughout her great career, she has been involved with biomathematics, patterns in genetic variation, and chaos theory.   She currently works as an educator and presenter with the aim of encouraging women and minority students to pursue graduate degrees in mathematics and other STEM fields. 

5.) Katherine Johnson (1918-2020)  Katherine Johnson was the main character of the critically acclaimed film "Hidden Figures." Her contributions in the field of orbital mechanics, alongside fellow female African American mathematicians Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson, were critical to the United States’ success in putting astronaut John Glenn into orbit in 1962.  She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2015.

Halfway Up . . . Halfway Down

     Recently I came across the following poem -- posted by the source English Literature on Facebook --  and it reminded me with delight of the good times I have had reading aloud to my children and grandchildren and, since the poem is a bit mathy, I share it below with you!

     Halfway Down     by A. A Milne

          Halfway down the stairs
          is a stair
          where i sit.
          there isn't any
          other stair
          quite like
          it.
          i'm not at the bottom,
          i'm not at the top; 
          so this is the stair
          where
          I always
          stop.

Counting and Rhyming

     Several days ago my email contained a surprise message -- containing a mathy poem --  from Ramandeep Johal, a theoretical physicist at IISER Mohali (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research) in northern India.  I offer Johal's poem below -- a poem from his 2016 collection, The Sea of Tranquility 

     From One to Ten     by Ramandeep Johal

          Some things you find in pairs
          some exist just alone.
          While a trinity needs
          some degree of unity,
          a group of four
          requires bit more.

Imaginary Numbers

     Current politics has made me take more notice of several politicians' imaginary numbers -- far from fact and human needs.  And, after a while -- to relax -- my mind moved on to the imaginary numbers of mathematics, and I found (at the PoetrySoup website) this poem which I'd like to share.

Imaginary Numbers       by Robert Pettit

Anybody can consider this statement as moot:
Negative real numbers cannot have a square root.
When working with real numbers with values less than zero,
the squared product will be positive; so where do you go?
In a parabola, all points except zero lie above the x-axis.
Many students get confused because of this.
This placed mathematicians in a bit of a quandary.
That was until numbers were invented that are imaginary.

I did not find online biographical information about poet Pettit but I did find this link to his many many poems available at PoetrySoup -- a list going back all the way to 2010.  AND here is a link to his 2010 limerick, "Seventeen."

This link leads to previous mentions of imaginary numbers in this blog.  

Math-Poetry Blog -- An Invitation to Explore

      Yesterday I made a blog posting with the same title as this one -- and this morning I discovered that my posting was full of links that were not working as I had expected.  And so, I have deleted the post.  I do, indeed, invite you to explore the blog -- lots of labels in the lower right-hand column can help you find specific posts.  And another posting with come soon . . .