It starts with counting . . .

Mathematical imagery is one of the many features I enjoy in the work of Canadian environmental scientist and poet Madhur Anand.  Here is a sample from her new collection (A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes).
 

Background:  In an experiment designed to test the truth of a given statement 

(often called the null hypothesis), a Type I error occurs if the experiment results in a true hypothesis 
being rejected (a "false positive") and a Type II error occurs if a false hypothesis is accepted. 

Type One Error     by Madhur Anand

I avoid news, talk to strangers, walk around the block
a thousand times and toss nickels for random samples.
I still get a few false positives.  I'm fine.  It's good. 

Statistics -- a lament

     Helping me to continue to connect National Poetry Month with Mathematics Awareness Month (with its theme of "Mathematics, Statistics, and the Data Deluge") is the following poem by Halifax mathematician Robert J. MacG. Dawson, and found in the September 2011 issue of The Mathematical Intelligencer. 

     Dawson's poem "Statistical Lament" will be recognizable to many as a parody of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now."  (Still more math songs and parodies may be found in earlier blog postings -- on 5 June 2011, 14 February 2011, 4 January 2011, and 23 April 2010.)

A poem of calculus (of ants on a worm)

Philip Wexler plays with the terminology of calculus in this poem:

     The Calculus of Ants on a Worm

     Swarming tiny
     bodies nibble
     away, no limits,