Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Zero is three!
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Zero plus anything is . . .
Zero Plus Anything Is a World by Jane Hirshfield
Four less one is three.
Three less two is one.
One less three
is what, is who,
remains.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Excitement in mathematics classrooms
Monday, March 27, 2017
Math-themed poems at Poets.org
When I read mathy poems by non-maths often I am intrigued by their alterations of correct mathematical statements -- part of "poetic license." Non-maths can use intriguing language that I, with my mathematics background, could not allow myself to say. For example, George David Clark's poem "Kiss Over Zero" has this opening line:
I was delighted to find in this math-themed group several old favorites, one of which is "Counting" by Douglas Goetsch -- a poem among those Sarah Glaz and I gathered a few years back for the anthology, Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (A K Peters / CRC Press, 2008) -- now available as an e-book.
Thursday, November 9, 2017
Stop saying GIRLS can't do MATH
Calculations by Brenda Cárdenas
“I don’t know what to tell you.
Your daughter doesn’t understand
math. Numbers trouble her, leave
her stuck on ground zero.”
Y fueron los mayas
quienes imaginaron el cero,
un signo para nada, para todo,
en sus gran calculaciones.
Is zero the velvet swoop into dream,
the loop into plumes of our breath?
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Imagine new numbers
My editor-colleague (Strange Attractors), Sarah Glaz, also has used poems for teaching -- for example, "The enigmatic number e." And Marion Cohen brings many poems of her own and others into her college seminar course, "Truth & Beauty: Mathematics in Literature." Add a west-coaster to these east-coast poet-teachers -- this time a California-based contributor: teacher, poet, and blogger (Math Mama Writes) Sue VanHattum. VanHattum (or "Math Mama") is a community college math teacher interested in all levels of math learning. Some of her own poems and selections from other mathy poets are available at the Wikispace, MathPoetry, that she started and maintains. Here is the poet's recent revision of a poem from that site, a poem about the invention (or discovery?) of imaginary numbers.
Imaginary Numbers Do the Trick by Sue VanHattum
Tuesday, May 23, 2023
Stimulate Math Class Discussion with Poems
Sometimes teachers want to understand more about their students' attitudes and concerns about learning a particular subject. Often, rather than asking direct questions like, "What is your difficulty?" or "Why don't you like geometry?" it can be useful to stimulate discussion with a poem. The website of the Academy of American Poets, offers at this link a wide selection of poems about school subjects. Scrolling down through this long list, eventually one comes to Poems for Math Class -- with poems for Algebra, Calculus, and Geometry.
One of the Academy's suggested poems is "Calculations" by Brenda Cardenas -- I offer the first stanza below -- the complete poem is included here in this posting from November, 2017.
from Calculations by Brenda Cárdenas
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
Seeking an EQUATION for LOVE . . .
An Equation for Love by Lisa Lajeunesse
They’ve found an equation for loveIt goes something like this
love equals attraction times compatibility to the power of opportunity
there’s more of course and there’s been much fiddling
with coefficients and lesser terms
involving age, pheromones and duration of eye contact
Thursday, April 6, 2023
Math in Song Lyrics -- Joni Mitchell
One of the fun surprises I have had recently is to discover mathematics in the lyrics of a once-popular song -- in "Ray's Dad's Cadillac" by musical legend Joni Mitchell, recent recipient of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.
Joni Mitchell -- who has recently come back to the stage after serious illness -- has surmounted barriers to female achievement and recognition as have many math-women. She has indeed "looked at life from both sides now" . . . Below I offer two mathy stanzas from her song -- "Ray's Dad's Cadillac." (The complete lyrics are available at this link).
from Ray's Dad's Cadillac by Joni Mitchell
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Poetry and Science
. . . poetry by Alice Major . . . |
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
Make Something of Nothing ... with Bob Dylan
from Too Much of Nothing by Bob Dylan
Too much of nothing
Can make a man abuse a king
He can walk the streets and boast like most
But he wouldn’t know a thing
Now, it’s all been done before
It’s all been written in the book
But when there’s too much of nothing
Nobody should look
Here is a link to the complete lyrics of "Too Much of Nothing." Enjoy.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
How much for a digit of PI?
Three Point One Four One Five Nine Two
Six Five Three Five Eight Nine Seven Nine
Three Two Three Eight Four Six Two Six
Four Three Three Eight Three Two
Seven Nine Five Zero Two Eight by Brian McCabe
Monday, December 6, 2021
Stories of Quadrilaterals
Sometimes I have time to browse my shelves and rediscover old favorites. Several of this blog's much-read poems have come from Scottish author Brian McCabe (Find blog search results at this link) -- and below I offer the first part of McCabe's two-part poem ("Two Quadrilaterals") entitled "The Restless Square."
Two Quadrilaterals by Brian McCabe
Part 1. The Restless Square
There was a square who yearned
to become something else.
It stretched its legs to mimic
an elegant rectangle but
lost its balance, leaned over
in a perilous parallelogram.
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
Browse Math-Poetry Links . . .
- TITLES OF POSTS (with links)
- January, 2020
- December, 2019
Tuesday, September 3, 2024
math talk -- a way to learn
EXPLORE MATHEMATICS BY TALKING ABOUT IT!
math talk: mathematical ideas in poems for two voices is the title of a 1991 poetry collection (Wide World Publishing, available here) by theoni pappas, a long-time teacher of mathematics and author of many books that help to popularize mathematics. Here are the opening lines of her poem-for-two-voices, "Zero," -- found on page 23 of her math-talk collection.
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
Love, marriage, and number . . .
Marriage Mathematics
each one bending
to a heavenly plus
couple greater value
1 + 1 = 3 + ...
... and serious if a series starts
but the minus of hell
when one leaves
2 – 1 = 0
Monday, June 20, 2011
Something for nothing
Here, from Hailey Leithauser, is a poem that celebrates the cipher.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Spheres and parallels
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
After loss we have nothing--which is something ...
A poet whose work I much admire is A. E. Stallings -- born in the US, in Georgia, but now living in Greece. This poem -- a sonnet -- deals with the paradox that nothing is something -- as with the integer zero and with the absence of a loved one. The poem was written for her father who taught statistics at Georgia State University.
Sine Qua Non by A. E. Stallings
Your absence, father, is nothing. It is naught—
The factor by which nothing will multiply,
The gap of a dropped stitch, the needle's eye
Weeping its black thread. It is the spot
Blindly spreading behind the looking glass.
It is the startled silences that come
When the refrigerator stops its hum,
And crickets pause to let the winter pass.
Your absence, father, is nothing—for it is
Omega's long last O, memory's elision,
The fraction of impossible division,
The element I move through, emptiness,
The void stars hang in, the interstice of lace,
The zero that still holds the sum in place.
"Sine Qua Non" is found in Stallings' collection Hapax (Northwestern University Press, 2006) and also in the anthology Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (AK Peters/CRC Press, 2008).
A wonderful collection of Stallings' poems is available at the PoetryFoundation website -- and more about this poet and her work is may be found here at her at Stallings' website.