Showing posts with label Michael Bartholomew-Biggs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Bartholomew-Biggs. Show all posts

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Two cultures

The opening poem of Uneasy Relations by mathematician-poet Michael Bartholomew-Biggs is concerned with similarities and differences between mathematical and poetic cultures -- a topic of immense interest also to me and one that I too try to address in my verse.  I wonder --  HOW can I show non-mathematicians that good mathematics is poetry??!!  And, moreover, how can I (mostly a mathematician) write (as advocated by Wallace Stevens and agreed with by other poets) of things rather than (as mathematics wants) of ideas.  OR, may one make poetry of ideas?

   Two Cultures     by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs

   Graves claimed there isn't
   much money in poetry:
   and none vice-versa.

   The first part stays true
   if we replace poetry
   by mathematics. 

Friday, October 19, 2012

Teaching math (?maths) is complex

     In the midst of a teaching career in Bloomsburg University I spent a year in an administrative position -- the school needed time to search for a proper provost and I was deemed good enough for the interim.  My good fortune during that year was to work closely with Kalyan, a highly competent man, born in India, who went on (as I did not) to become a college president.  Kalyan and I liked each other and early in the year we shared our views that we were both from "work twice as hard" categories.  That is, a woman or a dark-skinned man needs to work twice as hard as a white man to achieve recognition as the performance-equal of that white man.