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. 

A mathematician, a poet, a woman

When I contacted University of Kansas mathematician Judith Roitman for permission to include her poem "Sixth Cosmogony" in this poetry-math blog she was quick to point out that this is not really a mathy poem. For example, the math term "differentiated" in the first stanza of the poem is not being used in its mathematical sense. However, my motivations for including the poem remain. First, and quite important: this is a poem by a mathematician who is also a woman and a poet. Second, I am interested in mathematicians' reactions to seeing math terms in non-mathematical contexts; are mathematical meanings part of what you think of any time that you hear a math term such as "differentiate" or "factor" or "commute"?

Cities of Mathematics

Judith Johnson's multi-part poem, "Cities of Mathematics and Desire" is geometric in its descriptive power; scenes are constructed and mapped with the careful attention of a mathematical proof.  At a math-poetry reading a year ago today (January 6, 2012) at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston, Johnson read part 4 of this poem -- and it is included here in the July 2012 issue of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics.   Read on for part 2 of this 9-part poem:

2.  Of the Power of Chess to Feed the Starved     by Judith Johnson

That's so random! (NPR, OEDILF, etc.)

     One of the challenges I face in friendly conversations is not to overreact to a "misuse" of the word random.  When I hear someone use that word to describe events that are peculiar or haphazard my heart-rate rises in protest.  It is as if I am in math class where every term has one, quantifiable definition -- my use of random describes a situation when a variety of things may happen and all of them are equally likely.  Like when a fair coin is tossed, or a die.  Or when a lottery ticket is selected.
     Recently my attitude was aired nationally. Sort of.  On Friday, November 30, NPR's Evening Edition featured a discussion of random.  Written by commentator Neda Ulaby, "That's So Random:  The Evolution of an Odd Word" mentions the 1995 film "Clueless," a comedian (Spencer Thompson), the Hacker's Dictionary  -- and also includes comments from the Oxford English Dictionary's editor, Jesse Sheidlower. I am rethinking my stubborn position.

Universal and Particular -- Szymborska

Like Yves Bonnefoy (21 February 2012 posting), Wislawa Szymborska (who died on 1 February 2012) was born in 1923.  Like him she was concerned with the connections of the universal and the particular.  Here, in "A Large Number,"  she reflects, as she did in "A Contribution to Statistics," on the human meaning that lies behind numbers: 

Average, more or less . . .

The wit of American poet J. V. Cunningham (1911–1985) is here applied to statistics.

   Meditation on Statistical Method      by J. V. Cunningham 

   Plato, despair!
   We prove by norms
   How numbers bear
   Empiric forms,

Banach's Match Box Problem

A poetry collection by Susan Case (see also 5 July 2011 posting)  -- The Scottish Cafe (Slapering Hole Press, 2002) -- celebrates the lives and minds of a group of mathematicians in Poland during World War II. Its observations and insights add a new dimension to the important story of the Scottish Book to which it refers -- a book in which the mathematicians reorded their problems and solutions. First published in a mimeographed edition in 1957 by Stanislaw Ulam, The Scottish book: mathematics from the Scottish Café (Birkhäuser, 1981) may now be seen and searched at GoogleBooks.  Case's collection includes statements of two of the Scottish Book's problems:  here, below, is "problem 193" -- which I offer as a "found poem."  A photo of its Scottish Book solution follows.