Thursday, May 31, 2012

Arithmetic of war

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     In his poem, "Arithmetic on the Frontier," Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) wrote of Britain's nineteenth century military a...
Monday, May 28, 2012

Remembering Israel Lewis Schneider

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     On Monday, October 17, 2011, Israel Lewis Schneider (1924-2011) --  Silver Spring poet and mechanical engineer -- passed away .  I di...
2 comments:
Saturday, May 26, 2012

Crocheting mathematics

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Charlotte Henderson majored in mathematics and English at Wellesley College and has applied her dual interests as an editor for A K Peters, ...
Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Taking Stock

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Developing an inventory -- of what we have or have experienced, of what we see or imagine -- inevitably involves numbers and counting.  As i...
Sunday, May 20, 2012

Before calculators we did more counting!

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One of many sources of good poetry online is American Life in Poetry , collected by former U S Poet Laureate Ted Kooser .  In Column 368 , ...
Thursday, May 17, 2012

Natural numbers

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     My just-previous posting tells of a Monday poetry reading I was able to attend.  On Monday, May 14, a poetry reading took place that ...
Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Poetry in DC -- counting sheep

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The Washington, DC area offers a rich diversity of poetry events -- workshops and readings, contests and conferences.  An excellent way to ...
Saturday, May 12, 2012

Ode to Alan Turing

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In this week of announcements in the US about evolving views concerning human sexual preferences, it seems fit to offer a second poem (see a...
Wednesday, May 9, 2012

A toast to Alan Turing

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     Alan Turing (1912-1954) committed suicide at the age of 42. He was brilliant, arguably the best computer scientist of the twentieth c...
Sunday, May 6, 2012

A square -- for everyone!

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all     all all     all This square pun by Aram Saroyan appears in his Complete Minimal Poems   ( Ugly Duckling Pr...
Thursday, May 3, 2012

Pipher -- Math experiments, Pi

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     'Tis a favorite project of mine      A new value of pi to assign.           I would fix it at 3           For it's sim...
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...
1 comment:
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 ...
1 comment:
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 ...
1 comment:
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...
1 comment:
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. ...
1 comment:
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"...
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 ...