Song-writer Bill Calhoun is a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics at Pennsylvania's Bloomsburg University (where I also hung out for many years). He belongs, along with colleagues Erik Wynters and Kevin Ferland, to a band called "The Derivatives." And Bill has granted permission for me to include several of his math lyrics (parodies) here. (In this previous post, we consider the connection between song parodies and mathematical isomorphism.) My first Calhoun selection deals with difficult mathematical questions concerning classification of infinite sets and decidability. Following that, later lyrics consider proving theorems and finding derivatives.
Questions You Can’t Ever Decide* by Bill Calhoun
Picture yourself in a world filled with numbers,
But the numbers are really just words in disguise.
Gödel says “How can you prove you’re consistent,
If you can’t tell that this is a lie?”
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