Puzzle play

In volume 4 of The World of Mathematics (James R Newman, Editor; Dover 2003), in a section entitled "Amusements, Puzzles, and Fancies," is an essay by Edward Kasner and James R. Newman entitled "Pastimes of Past and Present Times." This piece is prefaced by a quote from Mark Twain: "Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do." One of the characteristics that mathematicians and poets have in common  is that both enjoy mind-play -- mental adventures with ideas or numbers or words, dancing and shaping into some new thing.

Prisoner's Dilemma -- and permutations

In game theory's original, single-play, Prisoner's Dilemma problem, two prisoners each are given the choice between silence and betrayal of the other. The optimal choice is betrayal -- and therein lies a paradox.  Volume 1.3 of the online journal Unsplendid includes the following poem by Isaac Cates that reveals the nature of this classic decision dilemma.

Sense and Nonsense

     Nonsense verse has a prominent place in the poetry that mathematicians enjoy. Perhaps this is so because mathematical discovery itself has a playful aspect--playing, as it were, with non-sense in an effort to tease the sense out of it.      Lewis Carroll, author of  both mathematics and literature, often has his characters offer speeches that are a clever mix of sense and nonsense. For example, we have these two stanzas from "Fit the Fifth" of The Hunting of the Snark, the words of the Butcher, explaining to the Beaver why 2 + 1 = 3.

Poems starring mathematicians - 2

Published a century later than William Benjamin Smith's "The Merman and the Seraph" (see April 14 posting) we have Crossing the Equal Sign (Plain View Press, 2007)--a poetry collection by Marion Deutsche Cohen.  Cohen lives in Philadelphia and teaches mathematics at Arcadia University where she has used her literary interests to develop a new course, "Truth and Beauty: Mathematics in Literature."  I have chosen several excerpts from Cohen's collection that offer internal snapshots of  her sort of mathematician: