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?”
Born in 1924, in Galati, Romania, Nina Cassian has published over fifty books -- besides poetry, she has works of fiction and books for children. Since 1985 she has lived in exile in the United States. Among those Cassian credits with strong influences on her poetry is mathematician / poet Dan Barbilian / Ion Barbu (1895-1961). This poem by Cassian illustrates those mathematical influences:
Poems from three women illustrate a range of emotional content in the mathematics classroom: Rita Dove's "Geometry" captures the excitement of a new mathematical discovery. Sue VanHattum's "Desire in a Math Class" tells of undercurrents of emotion beneath the surface in a formal classroom setting. Marion Deutsche Cohen's untitled poem [I stand up there and dance] offers a glimpse of what may go on in a teacher's mind as she performs for her class.
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