Larry Lesser is a songwriter who uses lyrics for teaching as well as entertainment. A varied sample of his creations for doing this are presented in his article "Mathematical lyrics; noteworthy endeavours in education" found in the "Poetry and Mathematics / Special Issue" of the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, March-June 2014).
One of the article's enchanting items is a song for children -- "Circle Song" -- which Lesser has written to the familiar tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"; this lyric offers a way to remember critical formulas for a circle.
Circle Song by Lawrence Mark Lesser
Take your finger 'round the jar:
Circumf'rence equals 2πr!
Showing posts with label circumference. Show all posts
Showing posts with label circumference. Show all posts
Friday, September 11, 2015
Songs of mathematics . . .
Labels:
area,
circle,
circumference,
infinity,
Lawrence Mark Lesser,
lyrics,
parody,
pi,
radius
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Poetry Reading 1-11-15 at JMM in San Antonio
at the 2015 Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM)
Although last-minute decisions to participate are possible -- you may simply show up and sign up to read -- we invite and encourage poets to submit poetry (≤ 3 poems, ≤ 5 minutes) and a bio in advance, and, as a result, be listed on our printed program. Inquiries and submissions (by December 1, 2014) may be made to Gizem Karaali (gizem.karaali@pomona.edu).
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Split This Rock 2014
Plan now to attend the 4th national biennial Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness in Washington, DC, March 27-30, 2014.
The sixteen poets to be featured at the 2014 festival are: Sheila Black, Franny Choi, Eduardo C. Corral, Gayle Danley, Natalie Diaz, Joy Harjo, Maria Melendez Kelson, Yusef Komunyakaa, Dunya Mikhail, Shailja Patel, Wang Ping, Claudia Rankine, Tim Seibles, Myra Sklarew, Danez Smith, and Anne Waldman. The website SplitThisRock.org offers photographs and more information about the festival. It will be awesome!
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
What is mathematics to animals?
In a playfully serious volume of verses by Eugene Ostashevsky we meet his alter ego, the "new philosopher" DJ Spinoza. With the intelligence and bravery of the other philosopher-Spinoza (Baruch / Benedict, 1632 - 1677), Ostachevsky's Spinoza pokes a bit of fun at things that might be taken too seriously -- such as logic or mathematics or . . .
Monday, August 6, 2012
Spanish favorites
One of my favorite DC-area poet-people is Yvette Neisser Moreno -- who, besides giving us her own work, is active in translation of Spanish-language poetry into English, most recently (with Patricia Bejarano Fisher) a Spanish and English edition of Venezuelan poet Maria Teresa Ogliastri’s South Pole/Polo Sur (Settlement House, 2011). Although I have not found any mathematical poems by Moreno, I learned from an interview that the Chilean Nobelist Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) is her favorite poet and I therefore present here the geometrically vivid opening opening stanza of Part XI of Neruda's well-known long poem, The Heights of Macchu Pichu: A Bilingual Edition (The Noonday Press, 1966).
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Emily Dickinson -- and circumference
Great poets may be investigated from many points of view. For Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), some have noticed that her work employs particular terms from mathematics. Including a much-quoted line -- "My business is circumference" -- in a letter to Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dickinson is said to have used the word "circumference" in six letters and seventeen poems. For example, the word appears in both of the poems offered below:
When Bells stop ringing—Church—begins
The Positive—of Bells—
When Cogs—stop—that's Circumference—
The Ultimate—of Wheels.
Labels:
circumference,
Emily Dickinson,
mathematics,
poetry,
Seo-Young Chu
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Remembering Pi-day, a day late
Yesterday (3-14) was Pi-day, but my recent thoughts have been focused on my math-teacher son Eric (who has acute pancreatitis) and his family -- and I forgot to post this poem on the proper day. Thanks to Lana Hechtman Ayers for these opening lines of "Circumference: A love poem."
Labels:
area,
circumference,
finite,
infinite,
irrational,
mathematics,
pi,
poetry
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Black History Month -- celebrate Haynes and Hughes
Living on the border of Washington DC I am exposed to items of local history for our nation's capital. One such item involves the "discovery" of Langston Hughes (1902-1967) by poet Vachel Lindsay (1879 - 1931) at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, a leading conference hotel in the city. A second story is a mathematical one. Martha Euphnemia Lofton Haynes (1890-1980), a fourth-generation Washingtonian, was the first black woman to earn a PhD in mathematics -- conferred in 1943 by Catholic University.
Monday, September 6, 2010
More of Pi in Poetry
Recording artist Kate Bush has written a song entitled “Pi” which includes some of π's digits in the lyrics. Likewise, Polish Nobelist (1996) Wislawa Szymborska also features its digits in her poem, “Pi,” which begins:
Labels:
calculation,
circle,
circumference,
compact,
diameter,
digits,
infinite,
irrational,
pi,
Robert Morgan,
transcendental,
Wislawa Szymborska
Thursday, September 2, 2010
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.
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.
Labels:
circle,
circumference,
decimal place,
diameter,
digits,
irrational,
Mike Keith,
mnemonic,
pi,
Poe,
rhyme,
WolframAlpha
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
From "Red Has No Reason" -- a poem about the nature of mathematics
My new poetry book, Red Has No Reason, is now available (from Plain View Press or amazon.com). Several of the poems mention math--and one of them comments on the nature of mathematics. Ideas for "A Taste of Mathematics" (below) came from a mathematics conference in San Antonio, TX (January 1993) where it was announced that the billionth digit in the decimal expansion of π is 9. Recently an amazing new calculation record of 5 trillion digits (claimed by Alexander J. Yee and Shigeru Kondo) has been announced.
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