The Function Room

For each of us who's studied mathematics, the word "function" triggers important mathematical meanings. And so, when I read Patrice Phillips un-mathematical poem "The Function Room," I automatically add a mathematical layer to the meaning.  Do you?

Rhymes help to remember the digits of Pi

Calculated at the website, WolframAlpha, here are the first fifty-nine digits of the irrational number π (ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter):

     π = 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749...

Before computers became available  to calculate π to lots of decimal places in an instant, people who did scientific calculations could keep the number easily available by memorizing some of the digits.  The website fun-with-words offers several mnemonics for  π , the most common type being a word-length mnemonic in which the number of letters in each word corresponds to a digit. For example the sentence, "How I wish I could calculate pi," gives us the first seven digits.

A Numerical Poem (Fibonacci)

Consider the following poem involving the Fibonacci numbers:
 

        1/89 = .0        +

                  .01        +

                  .001        +

                  .0002        +

                  .00003        +             

                  .000005        +

                  .0000008        +

                  .00000013        +

                  .000000021        +

                  .0000000034        +

                  .00000000055        +

                  .000000000089        +

                  .0000000000144        +

                  .  ...