Monday, April 30, 2012

What do we do with these numbers?

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During March 22-25, 2012 I participated in the Split This Rock Poetry Festival .  One of the fine poets I met there was Oregon poet and tea...
1 comment:
Friday, April 27, 2012

Poetry with Math -- BRIDGES 2012, Limericks

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During July 25-29, 2012, Towson University will be hosting BRIDGES 2012 , a mathematics-and-the-arts interdisciplinary conference. This yea...
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Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Macbeth and Probability

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     Kansas City educator Michael Round of the Center for autoSocratic Excellence has developed a host of math teaching tools -- and withi...
Saturday, April 21, 2012

Statistics -- math to improve man's lot

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Today's poem honors nurse and statistician Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) and is found in a fine poetry collection by Mary Alexandra...
1 comment:
Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Following Euler in Koenigsberg

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     The Köenigsberg Bridges have an important link to mathematics -- for mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) took a legendary Köenigs...
Sunday, April 15, 2012

Statistics -- a lament

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     Helping me to continue to connect National Poetry Month with Mathematics Awareness Month (with its theme of "Mathematics, Statist...
1 comment:
Thursday, April 12, 2012

Math or poetry -- must one choose?

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April celebrates poetry and mathematics -- it being both National Poetry Month and Mathematics Awareness Month -- and this year's mat...
Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Navigating this blog . . .

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     A query from a helpful reader has reminded me that it can be difficult to navigate a blog because new entries hide old ones.  If you s...
Saturday, April 7, 2012

A septina ("Safety in Numbers") -- and variations

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Recall that a sestina is a 39 line poem of six 6-line stanzas followed by a 3-line stanza.  The 6-line stanzas have lines that end in the ...
Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Start with a number . . .

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     April celebrates both poetry and mathematics -- this month that is the gateway to spring is also National Poetry Month and Mathematic...
Monday, April 2, 2012

Valley Voices

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With Richard Aston I share a love for science and logic, a love for poetry, and a love for the Susquehanna Valley.  His home is Wilkes-Bar...
Thursday, March 29, 2012

Celebrate Emmy Noether

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     On 23 March 1882 mathematician Emmy Noether (pronounced NER-ter) was born.  On 23 March 2010  I posted the first entry in this blog  --...
Monday, March 26, 2012

Poems with Numbers

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      Hats off to the organizers and presenters at the 2012 Split This Rock Poetry Festival held in DC this past weekend.  Great poets, gr...
Friday, March 23, 2012

Round

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Round      by  Russell Edson       Where there is no shape there is round.  Round has no shape; no more than a raindrop or a human tear ...
Tuesday, March 20, 2012

A Prayer of Numbers

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     Whether our language is music or mathematics, computer code or cookery --  as we learn to love the language and treat it with good car...
Saturday, March 17, 2012

Illness and Time -- Counting on

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One of life's special opportunities came to me ten years ago in Bucharest when I had the opportunity to meet poet Ileana Mălăncioiu an...
Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Verses that count

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At about.com one finds a variety of information -- from the dates of the rapidly approaching 2012 Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC...
Sunday, March 11, 2012

Chatting about REAL numbers

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The term " real number " confuses many who are not immersed in mathematics.  For these, to whom 1, 2, 3 and the other counting ...
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Thursday, March 8, 2012

Mathematics in Romanian poetry

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     When I first visited Romania, I met Doru Radu, then a teacher of English at Scoala Generala "Andre Muresanu" in Deva. And Do...
Monday, March 5, 2012

Poetic Explorations of . . . Mathematicians

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In the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics ( Volume 1, Issue 2 ), we find "Numen R ology: A Poetic Exploration of the Lives and Work of ...
Friday, March 2, 2012

Seeing Distance -- geometry in photography

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One of my favorite poem-stanza styles is a syllable-square -- it distributes the weights of the words in a way that pleases me. The poem bel...
Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Chaos and Order -- Stevens

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An article by Jeff Gordinier, " For Wallace Stevens, Hartford as Muse ," in the Travel Section of last Sunday's NY Times give...
Friday, February 24, 2012

Universal and Particular -- Szymborska

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Like Yves Bonnefoy ( 21 February 2012 posting), Wislawa Szymborska  ( who died on  1 February 2012 ) was born in 1923.  Like him she was co...
Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Universal and Particular

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Poet Yves Bonnefoy (b 1923) is one of France's greatest living poets. And Bonnefoy's university studies included mathematics. I rea...
Saturday, February 18, 2012

Langston Hughes could do anything!

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In the 1970s when I was a new professor (at Pennsylvania's Bloomsburg University), a particular colleague and I would chat occasionally ...
Thursday, February 16, 2012

2012 Split This Rock Poetry Festival -- March 22-25

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Earlybird registration ends February 22 for the 2012 Split this Rock Poetry Festival in Washington, DC, March 22-25.  Honoring poet June Jo...
Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Counting (with sadness) in Syria

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Burmese poet ko ko thett is an activist-scholar and, at present, a resident of Vienna, Austria. I became acquainted with his work through ...
Sunday, February 12, 2012

Be My Valentine

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Unlike many newspapers, the British Guardian  publishes poems -- and, on February 10, 2012, they offered a selection to celebrate the upcomi...
Friday, February 10, 2012

Recursion

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A mathematician may face a dilemma over the meaning of an ordinary term -- for words like "group" and "identity" and &qu...
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Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Is Math for Women?

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At a River Poets reading at the public library in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania on December 1, 2011, Carol Ann Heckman surprised me with her poe...
Sunday, February 5, 2012

Strength from Numbers

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During March 22-25, 2012, the third Split This Rock Poetry Festival:  Poems of Provocation and Witness will be held in Washington, DC. This...
Thursday, February 2, 2012

Szymborska (1923-2012) on Statistics

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Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012)  won the 1996 Nobel Prize for literature; I am saddened by her death -- yesterday, February 1, ...
Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Counting Groundhogs

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     I grew up in a town about 25 miles from Punxsutawney, PA -- and Groundhog Day on February 2 was local-news only. This was the quiet t...
Sunday, January 29, 2012

Juxtaposition

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One of my favorite phrases (loved for the sound of it) first came to my ears during my college studies of  abstract algebra: " multipl...
Thursday, January 26, 2012

Counting the seconds -- and leap seconds

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      Keeping time is a simple matter of counting -- counting seconds, summing them into minutes, hours, days. Or is it? Recent news has i...
Monday, January 23, 2012

Counting fingers and blackbirds

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Love of numbers is common in childhood -- and traditional nursery rhymes offer chances to know numbers as playmates and friends.  "Four...
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Friday, January 20, 2012

Statistics feels like poetry

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    Today's title comes from the following poem by statistician and poet Eveline Pye (introduced to this blog on 18 October, 2011 ).  ...
Tuesday, January 17, 2012

More statistics -- from Hiawatha

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As the author of this poem owes a debt to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, I too owe Greg Coxson -- who showed the poem to me. Hiawatha Designs...
Sunday, January 15, 2012

Average, more or less . . .

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The wit of American poet J. V. Cunningham (1911–1985) is here applied to statistics.    Meditation on Statistical Method        by J. V. ...
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Thursday, January 12, 2012

The Function Room

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For each of us who's studied mathematics, the word "function" triggers important mathematical meanings. And so, when I read Pa...
Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Is your favorite poet a mathematician?

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     The Joint Mathematics Meetings in Boston last week gave a fine opportunity for me to connect with both mathematicians and poets, old fr...
1 comment:
Sunday, January 8, 2012

Poetry heard at JMM

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In Boston on Friday evening, January 6, at the 2012 Joint Mathematics Meetings, these folks gathered and read -- for a delighted audience in...
Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Euclid meets Broadway

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Several years ago while visiting my older son in Colorado Springs I also went to nearby Boulder where, driving along Broadway, I came to a s...
1 comment:

From 2011 -- dates, titles of posts

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List of postings January 1 - December 31, 2011 Scrolling through the 12 months of titles below may lead you to topics and poets/poems of i...
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"...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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: