A student writes poetry for a math class . . .

A recent fun experience for me has been correspondence with Melanie Simms, a poet and math student at Pennsylvania's Bloomsburg University, where I taught for a bunch of years.  Melanie recently completed the course "Mathematical Thinking" -- a course that I helped to develop during my years at BU and one for which I wrote a textbook (Mathematics in Daily Life:  Making Decisions and Solving Problems, McGraw-Hill, 1986).   The course was developed to offer general quantitative skills for students majoring in fields (such as English or Art)  that do not have a specific mathematics requirement.  Melanie's instructor for the course, Paul Loomis, is a singer and songwriter and, with him as first reader, Melanie composed a mathematical poem involving course material.  She has shared the poem with me and has given me permission to post it here.

     The Mathematics of Chance      by Melanie Simms

     The gods of chance
     Have left me skewed
     My distribution, variable!
     With ranges far, and ranges wide
     My navigation's terrible! 

Things to Count On

Tomorrow is my mother's birthday.  Born in 1912, she has been gone for several years now -- and tomorrow my sons and I will travel to Indiana, Pennsylvania to visit her grave and the farmhouse where I grew up.  In honor of my mother, I post this poem (also posted on October 1, 2010) that enumerates ways that numbers were vital in my early life.

Things to Count On            by JoAnne Growney