Showing posts with label quiz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quiz. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Are we speaking of "mathematics" or "poetry"?

     This week started with the excitement of an email message from Evelyn Lamb with a link to her Scientific American blog where she created a fun-to-take online poetry-math quiz based on an idea of mine (first published in 1992):

Can you tell the difference between mathematics and poetry?
Here’s a link to a SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN quiz to help you decide?

And a couple of centuries ago there was William Wordsworth -- who also contemplated both poetry and mathematics:

               On poetry and geometric truth
               and their high privilege of lasting life,
               From all internal injury exempt,
               I mused; upon these chiefly:  and at length,
               My senses yielding to the sultry air,
               Sleep seized me, and I passed into a dream.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
The Prelude, Book 5