Monday, October 29, 2012

Greatest common factor

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Sometimes a mathematical phrase offers a splendid concentration of meaning in an otherwise non-mathematical poem.  This is the case in the p...
Friday, October 26, 2012

Geometry of Trees

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     Donna Masini, one of my poetry teachers at Hunter College, offered this rule of thumb for use of a particular word in a poem:  the word...
Tuesday, October 23, 2012

"On the Life of Ptolemy"

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Poetry at its best uses words in new ways.  Mathematics sometimes does that also.  But for a poet to use mathematical terms in new ways ca...
Sunday, October 21, 2012

Seeking math-poets -- JMM, SanDiego 1-11-13

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Call for Readers:      The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics will host a reading of poetry-with-mathematics at the annual Joint Mathematic...
Friday, October 19, 2012

Teaching math (?maths) is complex

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     In the midst of a teaching career in Bloomsburg University I spent a year in an administrative position -- the school needed time to se...
Saturday, October 6, 2012

Geometry . . . a way of seeing

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Today's poem is not only a fine work of art, it is also -- for me-- a doorway to memory.   I first heard it in the poet's voice when...
Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Puzzle poems from Benjamin Banneker

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Benjamin Banneker (1731 - 1806) was a free African American mathematician and  almanac author -- also an astronomer, surveyor, and farmer....
Sunday, September 30, 2012

The best of the many

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     Here I link to an article by David Alpaugh, "The New Math of Poetry," -- not brand-new, for it bears a date of February, 201...
Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Surprise me!

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Bob Grumman , a mathy poet whose work has appeared in this blog ( 21 June 2010 ) and a blogger , has recently been invited to write a Guest ...
Sunday, September 23, 2012

From the Scottish Cafe

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     A poetry collection by Susan Case (see also 5 July 2011 and 5 August 2011 postings)  --  The Scottish Cafe ( Slapering Hole Press ,...
Thursday, September 20, 2012

The view from here -- or there

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From Nashville math teacher and blogger, Tad Wert , I learned of this poem, "Geometry, Lost Cove" by his Harpeth Hall School colle...
Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Is Algebra Necessary?

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     Anticipating my interest, several friends sent me links to a late-July opinion piece in The New York Times entitled "Is Algebra ...
Saturday, September 15, 2012

A poem for a math-friend

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     On July 14, 2012, my good friend, Toni Carroll , passed on. I first knew Toni in the 1980s as a colleague in the department of mathemat...
Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Variations of a line

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In mathematics a line plays many roles -- as in this fine poem (which is a sonnet, more or less).      Lines      by Martha Collins     ...
Monday, September 10, 2012

It Crossed My Mind

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     In Elinor Gordon Blair --  my English teacher during my junior and senior years at Indiana Joint High School in Indiana, Pennsylvania ...
Monday, September 3, 2012

An instrument in the shape of a woman

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     Celebrating math-women with poetry is a project to which I devoted several postings earlier this summer -- see, for example, these Ju...
Friday, August 31, 2012

Fibs in NZ -- and climate change

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     A few days ago, on August 21, it was Poet's Day in New Zealand and the blog sciencelens.com featured a math-poetry theme ; that po...
2 comments:
Wednesday, August 29, 2012

What is mathematics to animals?

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In a playfully serious volume of verses by Eugene Ostashevsky we meet his alter ego, the "new philosopher" DJ Spinoza.  With the...
Saturday, August 25, 2012

Mindless chance

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From the 2005 Summer issue of from  Prairie Schooner we have this haunting poem by Diane Mehta about the unknown probabilities of life an...
Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Math humor

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      Phyllis Diller (1917-20120), outspoken and funny, pioneering female comedian, died Monday, August 20.  Her self-deprecating humor wa...
Sunday, August 19, 2012

Worth of a horse

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When my friend Kay and I visited the National Museum of the American Indian Museum in Washington last Wednesday, August 15, we particularl...
Thursday, August 16, 2012

Free vs Constraints -- Sandburg - Frost

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One of the delights of investigation -- in library books or on the internet or walking about in the world -- is that one bit of information ...
Monday, August 13, 2012

Thirty and three

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One of my poetry collections is a particular treasure because of its history.  My aunt, Ruth Margaret Simpson Robinson, graduated (as I als...
Friday, August 10, 2012

Summing thin slices

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This poem by recent (2008-2010) poet laureate Kay Ryan at first made me think of calculus, of integration, summing all the thin slices to f...
Monday, August 6, 2012

Spanish favorites

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One of my favorite DC-area poet-people is Yvette Neisser Moreno -- who, besides giving us her own work, is active in translation of  Spanis...
Friday, August 3, 2012

JHM -- many math poems

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     Volume 2, Issue 2 (July 2012) of the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics has recently become available online -- and it has lots of p...
Tuesday, July 31, 2012

For Hazlett -- an Exquisite Corpse poem

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At the recent  BRIDGES Math-Art Conference at Towson University, I led a Sunday afternoon Poetry-with-Mathematics Workshop .  One of our wr...
Saturday, July 28, 2012

Math super-hero

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One day not long ago I told my Silver Spring neighbor, Nancy KapLon (nee Lon), of my interest in helping outstanding math-women to be more ...
Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Math-women -- snowballing . . .

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These syllable-snowball poems (increasing by one syllable from line to line) note a few of the (living) math-women I admire.   They are ...
Saturday, July 21, 2012

She had a way with numbers

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In Letters from a Floating World , artist and poet Siv Cedering (1939-2007) has given us a poignant portrait of astronomer (and math-woman) ...
Tuesday, July 17, 2012

An algorithm shapes a poem

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Mathematics sometimes appears in poetry via patterns that follow the Fibonacci numbers . The pattern of Pascal's triangle also has been...
Saturday, July 14, 2012

More of Hypatia -- brave, smart woman

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Poet and blogger Ellen Moody offers a lively and informative feature on poet Elizabeth Tollett (1694-1754) ; Tollett, too, wrote of forebe...
1 comment:
Wednesday, July 11, 2012

She died for mathematics

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     Hypatia of Alexandria (in Greek: Υπατία) (c. 370 C.E. – 415 C.E.) was a popular Egyptian female philosopher, mathematician, astronomer...
1 comment:
Sunday, July 8, 2012

What are the chances?

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Ohioan Miles David Moore is an active participant in Washington, DC literary activities, including a reading series at Arlington's Iot...
Thursday, July 5, 2012

Visit BRIDGES -- for (art and) poetry

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This growing-then-melting syllable-snowball poem is offered in recognition of mathematician-and-poet Sarah Glaz and as a reminder of the po...
Tuesday, July 3, 2012

SHE can solve any equation!

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Today's New York Times offers a tribute to Mildred Spiewak Dresselhaus , a professor emerita of physics and engineering at MIT.  The T...
Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Emily Dickinson -- and circumference

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     Great poets may be investigated from many points of view.  For Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), some have noticed that her work employs p...
Sunday, June 24, 2012

Remembering Sophia Kovalevsky

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With Reason: A Portrait       by JoAnne Growney   (June 2012 )         Sophia Kovalevsky *    (1850-1891 ) Because she was Russian  . ...
1 comment:
Thursday, June 21, 2012

Seeking poems about math-women

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In this blog I have previously posted poems that speak of the lives of these math-women:      Sophie Germain (1776-1831)      Floren...
Monday, June 18, 2012

Sophie Germain dressed as a man to study math

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One of the fine sources for biographies and other topics in the history of mathematics is MacTutor History of Mathematics archive , hosted...
Friday, June 15, 2012

Can mathematics maximize happiness?

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     My post for last Monday ( 11 June 2012 ) offered a link I would like to repeat :  to an article by Judy Green , " How Many Wome...
Monday, June 11, 2012

Think Like a Man

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     To publish mathematics,      a woman must learn to think      like a man, learn to write like      a man, to use only her      ini...
2 comments:
Friday, June 8, 2012

Computer code -- is poetry?

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Dubliner Eavan Boland is a master poet (and one of my favorites); Ireland shares her with the creative writing program at Stanford Universi...
5 comments:
Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Sum of moments

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Here is a 3x3 square poem -- inspired by a recently-found margin-note I made in Differential and Integral Calculus (by Ross R Middlemiss )...
Sunday, June 3, 2012

Counting the dead

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This poem by Joan Mazza heightens the impact of war-data by bringing it into the kitchen and the office -- juxtaposing war-numbers with t...
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...