Rhymes Help Us Remember

     In a few days I will be going on a vacation with family -- enjoying time with my children and grandchildren.  As I think back to past times together, I remember querying my grandkids about their math interests and suggesting the invention of a mathy rhyme.  I find rhyming statements easier to remember than non-rhyming ones -- and my grandchildren enjoyed discovering and inventing and repeating rhymes -- sometimes brilliant and sometimes silly.

     One of my longest-known and all-time favorite mathy rhymes is this one that tells the days of the month; below is a version of this memory-aid, found online here at Math is Fun.  

Mathematics and Golf

      Poet and science-writer Sam Illingworth has been noted in earlier posts in this blog -- here's a link -- and I enjoy online-searching for his work again and again to find still more.   Illingworth's blog, The Poetry of Science, is a wonderful site to visit and revisit, to read and explore.  

    Recently I discovered the following Illingworth poem  (posted at The Poetry of Science on June 19, 2025) -- a poem with a bit of math AND inspired by recent research findings that living near a golf course increases the risk of Parkinson's disease (possibly due to exposure to pesticides used on the course).

          Overspill      by Sam Illingworth

               They do not play,
               but live beside
               the tailored grass.

2015 Documentary Film -- Calculating Ada

     One of the mathematicians that I celebrate for her achievements is Ada Lovelace  (1815 - 1832).  Despite her short life (with death due to uterine cancer) Lovelace did important work on the development of computers (in her time called analytical engines).   

     Here is a link to a fascinating documentary, "Calculating Ada:  The Countess of Computing -- 2015,"  about the life of Ada. Thinking about Ada and exploring mathy poems led me to the collection Against Infinity (on my bookshelf) and to the following poem:

          Zero     by Harriet Zinnes (1919-2019)

Learning by Writing . . . and Revising . . .

      On X (Twitter) today I found the following quote posted by poet Ilya Kaminsky -- quoting recently deceased poet Fanny Howe (1940-2025).  Howe's poetic statement, quoted below, is one that applies (for me, at least) to both poetry and mathematics:

One way to understand your own condition is to write something and spend a long time revising it.

In revising you teach yourself.  You find your own information buried in your body.  It is still alive until you are not.

Here, at PoetryFoundation.com, are more than twenty of Howe's poems; I offer one of these below:

Mathematics linked to Water

      I was captivated by the title -- "He's Not a Poet, But He Plays One" -- of a poem (found here) by Donald Illich -- and it led me to want to explore this poet's writing.  Sometimes he uses mathematics -- not in major thematic ways but in very interesting ways.  Below I offer a poem that illustrates my view.

       Water Mathematics       by Donald Illich

             During the ocean we timed our lake,
             calculated the river and the stream,

             modeled the pond under dangerous 
             situations.  Water was really math,

Teaching Math with Poetry -- Some Activities

      The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (JHM) offers delightful and broad-ranging connections between mathematics and the arts.  An article that I discovered recently considers ways to use poetry in mathematics classes.  Found in the July 2023 issue, "Teaching Mathematics with Poetry: Some Activities,"  by Alexis E. Langellier (an adjunct professor of Computer Science at Moraine Valley Community College and a graduate teaching assistant at graduate student in Mathematical Sciences at Northern Illinois University).  Working toward a degree in Computer Science, Langellier has this intent:  My goal is to get more women in STEM.