Friday, December 30, 2011

Good numbers . . .

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     My wish for the New Year 2012 is that you will have good numbers -- that your happiness will have high peaks, that your sadness and gri...
Monday, December 26, 2011

A mathematical woman

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As in an earlier posting ( 20 December 2011 ), today's feature includes verse by Lord Byron (1788-1824). This time the source is Byron...
Thursday, December 22, 2011

Counting on Christmas

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 1 1  one 1  2 two 2 1   3   three 3   3 1   4 4  four  4 4 1   5 five 5 5 5 five 5 1   6 six 6 6 six 6 6 six 6 1  7 7 7 seven 7...
Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Thoughts Suggested by a College Examination

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Just when I was convinced that mathematical subject matter appears proportionately more in modern than in classical poetry, I turned again t...
Saturday, December 17, 2011

Ruth Stone counts

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It seemed as if she might write -- and write well -- forever.  But she did not.  Moreover, poems by award-winning poet Ruth Stone (1915-201...
Wednesday, December 14, 2011

A puzzle with a partial solution

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     When we have experiences near to each other, we may try to connect them. We form superstitions. "Bad things come in threes"...
2 comments:
Sunday, December 11, 2011

Poetry captures math student

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This sonnet retells a familiar story -- a teacher influences a student's choice of studies. Prior to reading, many in mathematics may w...
1 comment:
Thursday, December 8, 2011

Monsieur Probabilty

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In recent months, I have encountered a variety of poems about mathematicians (Links to several of these are provided at the end of this post...
2 comments:
Monday, December 5, 2011

Poetic Pascal Triangle

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First published in 2007 in Mathematics Magazine , Caleb Emmons' poem "Dearest Blaise" has the form of (Blaise) Pascal's Tr...
2 comments:
Saturday, December 3, 2011

Mathematics works with witchcraft

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T. A. Noonan  sometimes uses the languages of mathematics and computer science as tools in her experimental poetry, gathered in her collecti...
Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Echoes of childhood rhymes

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For those of us who live and breathe mathematics, there is much of it that affects us deeply.  Even those of us whose mathematics is mostly ...
Sunday, November 27, 2011

How much for a digit of PI?

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Scottish poet Brian McCabe writes playfully of numbers.  In the following poem he imagines an auction of the digits of   π .    Three Poi...
Thursday, November 24, 2011

Open and Closed -- Tomas Transtromer

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A background in mathematics gives my enchantment with words a special twist. Each time I see familiar math terms in a poem I layer their ma...
Monday, November 21, 2011

Reading the Rubaiyat

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Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) was a mathematician who wrote poetry.  Here are two quatrains from his Rubaiyat .          XLVI    For in and ...
Friday, November 18, 2011

Equivalence

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In telling the time, we commonly refer to hours that differ by a multiple of 12 using the same number. Sixty hours after 3 o'clock it is...
Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Portrait of Max Dehn

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Today I offer a poem by Portuguese mathematician  F. J. Craveiro de Carvalho -- its initial English publication was in Topology Atlas , 2005...
Sunday, November 13, 2011

Portraits of a mathematician

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Ideas for this posting began with my post on  30 October 2011 in which I selected 7 favorite lines of poetry as a sort of self-portrait.  T...
Thursday, November 10, 2011

Mathematics of desire

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Last Monday evening, I listened with pleasure to Pennsylvania (Fogelsville) poet Barbara Crooker read at Cafe Muse (with Meredith Davies H...
Monday, November 7, 2011

Mathematician-Poet Glaz

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     Sarah Glaz , a professor-mathematician at the University of Connecticut -- and a poet -- is at the forefront of appreciation and advoca...
Saturday, November 5, 2011

Four colors will do

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     As I work with Gizem Karaali, an editor of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics , to plan a reading of mathematical poetry at the JM...
2 comments:
Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Division by zero

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The November 2011 issue of the Scottish ezine, The Bottle Imp , is just out and it includes my review of poet Brian McCabe's Zero ( P...
Sunday, October 30, 2011

What can 7 objects say? Or 100?

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      A friend, a high school art teacher, had one of her students paint a portrait of her -- not of her bodily self but a still life of the...
2 comments:
Friday, October 28, 2011

Music on the hypotenuse

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Dr. Cai Tianxin is a professor of mathematics (specializing in number theory) at Zhejiang University, China. He also is an accomplished and...
Thursday, October 27, 2011

Submit math-science poetry

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During the month of November, the online journal Talking Writing is seeking submission of poetry with connections to mathematics and the sc...
2 comments:
Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Chaos Over the Hors d'Oeuvres

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Some systems of equations can produce vast changes in output with only small changes in input.  Or not.  This sensitivitiy to initial condit...
Sunday, October 23, 2011

Permutations and Centos

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A Cento is a collage poem made of lines taken from other poems -- such as a sonnet composed of lines from fourteen of Millay's sonnets, ...
Thursday, October 20, 2011

A whole and its parts

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     Aristotle may have been the first to assert that a whole is more than the sum of its parts .  Mathematics textbooks are likely to say ...
Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Things the fingers know

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Blogger Peter Cameron sent me a link to an lively article, " Eveline Pye: Poetry in Numbers "  in the September 2011 issue of the...
2 comments:
Sunday, October 16, 2011

A small Fib

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My dilemma    I've    lost    the art    of careful    thought, asea in floods    of  trivial   information.               by JoA...
Thursday, October 13, 2011

Hamilton -- mathematician, poet, Irishman

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     October 15-22 is Maths Week in Ireland -- as I learned from this article in the Irish Times  celebrating maths and the Irish mathematic...
Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Like poetry, mathematics is beautiful

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     Congratulations to Justin Southey who is completing his doctoral studies in mathematics at the University of Johannesburg under the dir...
Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Numbers from the Piano

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     Of all of the things we might try to say when we sit down to write a poem, which are the ones we should choose?  Sometimes we may say w...
Sunday, October 9, 2011

Counting the women

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     The stimulus for this posting appeared a few weeks ago in the Washington Post -- in an article that considers the loneliness of women...
Saturday, October 8, 2011

How I won the raffle

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Dannie Abse is a deservedly celebrated Welsh poet -- and before his retirement he was also  a physician.  I first saw "How I Won the R...
Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Action at a distance

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One of the great things about writing this blog is the people who have -- out of the blue and across the miles -- sent along a great poem or...
1 comment:
Friday, September 30, 2011

The square root of Everest

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Of the poets who frequently use mathematical ideas in their work, Howard Nemerov (1920-1991) is one of my favorites.  Recently, while brows...
1 comment:
Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Math meets Dr Seuss

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Blogger Sue VanHattum ( MathMamaWrites ) sent me a link to a posting on another blog, kGuac, on which she found a Dr Seussical expression o...
Monday, September 26, 2011

Learning to count

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The childhood of Romanian poet Nichita Stanescu (1933-1983) took place during World War II and his teen years during his country's adju...
Saturday, September 24, 2011

Mathematical theorems tornadoing

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This poem is fun!    Horse’s Adventure      by Jason Bredle      The horse discovered a gateway to another    dimension, and with noth...
Thursday, September 22, 2011

The wealth of ambiguity

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When we read these lines by Robert Burns  (1759-1796),      Oh my luv is like a red, red rose,      That's newly sprung in June . . ....
Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Poetry at JMM -- in Boston 6-Jan-2012

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Call for Submissions:      The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics will host a reading of poetry-with-mathematics on Friday, January 6, 5-7 ...
2 comments:
Sunday, September 18, 2011

Baseball, math, and poetry

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The end of summer approaches and, with it, the end of the baseball season.  This blog celebrated the triplet (baseball, mathematics, poetry)...
Friday, September 16, 2011

Best words in the best order

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     Writers of mathematics strive for clear and careful wording, especially in the formulation of definitions. Well-specified definitions ...
Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Analysis of a sacred site

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Poet Allison Hedge Coke descends from moundbuilders and mixed ancestry from several Native American communities with several Europoean ones...
Sunday, September 11, 2011

A Piece of Coffee -- Stein with some math terms

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I love the poetry of Gertrude Stein.  Perhaps this is so because I have never taken a class in which her work was taught and I have never re...
Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Symmetric 4 x 4 square

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Martin Gardner (1914-2010) studied philosophy and was interested in everything.  For 25 years he wrote the "Mathematical Games" f...
Sunday, September 4, 2011

Applying statistics . . .

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From Seattle poet Kathleen Flenniken , a sensitive application of the normal distribution to the population of participants in an elementary...
3 comments:
Friday, September 2, 2011

Two ways to compute 1/3

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Here, from  Betsy Devine and Joel E Cohen , is a "mathematical" limerick:         An Integral Limerick
1 comment:
Tuesday, August 30, 2011

This plane of earthly love

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Poet Joan Mazza  celebrates qualities mathematical:      To a Mathematician Lover      by Joan Mazza    As we embark on this plane    o...
Saturday, August 27, 2011

Earthquake and Hurricane

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It would not be easy to argue that a poem whose numbers merely identify its stanzas is "mathematical" but "Curriculum Vitae,...
Friday, August 26, 2011

350: Science --> Poetry --> Music

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350 parts per million is the "safe upper limit" for CO 2 in our atmosphere presented by NASA scientist Jim Hansen in December 20...
Wednesday, August 24, 2011

A thousand and fifty-one waves

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Twenty-five years ago I had an enormous appetite for poems by Stevie Smith (1902-1971).  I loved the way that they seemed so unstudied -- p...
1 comment:
Friday, August 19, 2011

Half-twist and link -- in a Sestina

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     Mobius strip         by Heidi Willamson      A simple science trick to try at home.      Half-twist a slip of paper. Link the ends ...
Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Lieber's INFINITY -- poetic prose

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It has surprised me to discover that some of my best-remembered learning took place at the hands of teachers I did not particularly like.  O...
Monday, August 15, 2011

Some cat!

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My title is a borrowing from E. B. White's Charlotte's Web -- which I saw recently with grandchildren at Glen Echo Park's Adven...
1 comment:
Wednesday, August 10, 2011

The hypotenuse of an isosceles triangle

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Detroit poet, Philip Levine , has been selected as the new Poet Laureate of the United States. Selected by the librarian of Congress (Jame...
Monday, August 8, 2011

Can a mathematician see red?

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Held late in July, this year's 2011 Bridges (Math-Arts) Conference in Coimbra, Portugal included a poetry reading for which I'd be...
Friday, August 5, 2011

Banach's Match Box Problem

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A poetry collection by Susan Case (see also 5 July 2011 posting )  --  The Scottish Cafe ( Slapering Hole Press , 2002) -- celebrates the ...
Thursday, August 4, 2011

Cantor Ternary Set

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The second issue of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics   has recently been posted -- with more new poems .  The first issue contained a...
Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Puzzle play

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In volume 4 of The World of Mathematics  ( James R Newman, Editor; Dover 2003 ), in a section entitled "Amusements, Puzzles, and Fanci...
1 comment:
Friday, July 29, 2011

Mathematical Induction -- principle, perhaps poem

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One of my teachers -- I think it was Mr Smith in "College Algebra" during my freshman year at Westminster -- gave me these words t...
Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Bridges in Coimbra

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     Newton's binomial is as beautiful as Venus de Milo.      What happens is that few people notice it.                 -- Fernando...
2 comments:
Sunday, July 24, 2011

Little Infinite Poem

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   Little Infinite Poem        by  Federico Garcia Lorca                For Luis Cardoza y Aragón       To take the wrong road    is t...
Thursday, July 21, 2011

The wind, counting

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     Who can ever forget      listening to the wind go by      counting its money      and throwing it away?
Monday, July 18, 2011

Finding a square root

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Here is an old poem (1849) by George Van Waters that offers instruction on finding a square root . This process was part of my junior high l...
Friday, July 15, 2011

I have dreamed geometry

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   Descartes        by Jorge Luis Borges    I am the only man on earth, but perhaps there is neither earth nor man.    Perhaps a god is ...
Monday, July 11, 2011

Seeking a universal language

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Is mathematics a universal language?  Not only is this universality often postulated but also it was said  -- some decades back -- that devi...
Friday, July 8, 2011

Ancestry -- what counts

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Etheridge Knight began writing poetry while an inmate at the Indiana State Prison and published his first collection, Poems from Prison, i...
Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Mathematicians at work

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     About her collecton, The Scottish Café ( Slapering Hol Press , 2002), Susan Case offers this note:      This series of poems is loose...
Saturday, July 2, 2011

Mathematicians divide

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One of my fine graduate courses at Hunter College was a "World Poetry" course taught by William Pitt Root .  One of our texts was ...
Wednesday, June 29, 2011

5 x 5 and 6 x 6

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Many poets have found the sonnet to be an ideal poetic form -- its iambic pentameter lines are like five heartbeats assembled in a single b...
Sunday, June 26, 2011

The Joys of Mathematics

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   The Joys of Mathematics      by Peter Boyle    At fifty I will begin my count towards the infinite numbers.    At negative ninety nin...
Thursday, June 23, 2011

Creation Myth on a Mobius Band

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On the   website of Bert-Jaap Koops , I found this small poem by a poet I admire greatly, Howard Nemerov (1920-1991) .      Creation Myth ...
Monday, June 20, 2011

Something for nothing

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     Among my favorite mathematical ideas are the seeming-paradoxes -- notions that require a twist and a turn and a leap before one can say...
Friday, June 17, 2011

Circling -- with Rilke

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Ranier Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was born in Prague but emigrated to Germany and is one of the great modern lyric poets.   The following Rilk...
Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Found in Flatland

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Over the years I have shared with friends and students my copy of Edwin Abbott 's Flatland (first published in England in 1884) and, al...
Monday, June 13, 2011

Stanescu - poetic mathematics

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Today I found a link to a recent article, "Matematica şi poezia ," that considers commonalities among the arts and mathematics and...
1 comment:
Sunday, June 12, 2011

Lagrange points

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The Italian-French mathematician Josef Lagrange discovered the existence of five special "Lagrange points" (aka Lagrangian points...
Thursday, June 9, 2011

Counting on things -- a prose poem

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Russell Edson is one of the contemporary masters of the prose poem (a poem whose words are organized into paragraphs rather than stanzas)....
Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Right Triangle

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The shape of a poem influences our reading of it -- short lines cause reading with lots of pauses whereas we read long lines quickly to get ...
1 comment:
Sunday, June 5, 2011

Math lyrics -- Lehrer et al

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Mathematicians with poetic tendency often use their word-talents to write song-lyrics rather than poems; a master of the song-writing art wa...
Thursday, June 2, 2011

A square poem of Romania

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When I'm working on a poem that resists my efforts to express what I must say, sometimes I turn to the square for a rescue -- that is, I...
1 comment:
Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Fear of math

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California poet Carol Dorf  is a high school math teacher (and has taught in a science museum) -- and images from math and science permeate ...
Monday, May 30, 2011

Once a student of Euclid

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The Chair     by Charles Simic The chair was once a student of Euclid.
Friday, May 27, 2011

The Bridges of Konigsberg

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From the August 1997 issue of The Mathematical Intelligencer , we have this poem by Judith Saunders  about a long-standing puzzle solved so...