Thursday, February 28, 2013

Places to go, ideas to see

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     Today I want to suggest interesting internet locations to visit.      This first link leads to an hour-long documentary on YouTube on...
1 comment:
Monday, February 25, 2013

One of the best -- and a woman

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Women in mathematics have not been much-written-about.  This blog has made  a few corrective efforts and more are needed. Perhaps change is ...
Friday, February 22, 2013

Counting for Freedom -- the Amistad trials

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     Josiah Willard Gibbs (Jr, 1839 – 1903) was an American scientist who made important theoretical contributions to physics, chemistry, a...
Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Spheres and parallels

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On 23 January 2013 I posted a latitude-longitude poem "Zero-Zero" by Elizabeth Bodien and today I offer another of her poems of ...
Sunday, February 17, 2013

MathWoman Limericks

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My desk dictionary describes a limerick as a nonsense poem; my own experience has found these five-line rhymes to be more often bawdy than n...
Thursday, February 14, 2013

One Billion Rising

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Below I repeat a syllable-square first posted on 18 August 2010 and included in  Red Has No Reason .  Today, Valentine's Day, stand up ...
Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Hilary Tham -- Counting a life

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     Several of my friends speak with reverent admiration of Hilary Tham (1946  -2005) ,  noted Washington, DC-area poet, teacher, and paint...
Saturday, February 9, 2013

Limericks and a Cardioid -- for Valentine's Day

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      Oh, math-lover most divine,      for you this mathy Valentine --           found when I looked           in a calculus book -- ...
Thursday, February 7, 2013

Odd numbers are common

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A few weeks ago, on Thursday January 17, Chicago poet Virginia Bell was one of the very fine poets who participated (along with me) at a re...
Monday, February 4, 2013

Problems of Translation

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     June Jordan's poem "Problems of Translation: Problems of Language" ( found at PoetryFoundation.org ) uses numbers and mea...
Friday, February 1, 2013

Tomorrow is (or is not) Groundhog Day

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     Last year my February 1 post anticipated Groundhog Day with a poem that mentioned the crop damage that groundhogs do by tunneling unde...
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Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Rhyme, beauty, and usefulness

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     For many years poetry was transmitted orally and rhymes were vital because they are easily remembered.  In recent years, however, free ...
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Saturday, January 26, 2013

Poetry at JMM -- groups, etc.

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     A math-poetry reading on January 11 at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego -- organized by Gizem Karaali (an editor of the Jo...
Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Latitude, longitude, and inauguration

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Elizabeth Bodien now lives in a rural area in eastern Pennsylvania -- settling there after other lives in California, in Japan, in West Afr...
Thursday, January 17, 2013

A Baker's Dozen -- in Takoma Park

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This evening I had the privilege of being part of a poetry reading at the Takoma Park Community Center   -- one of four featured poets, I wa...
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Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Counting grains of sand

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Recently I have found online translations of several poems by Norwegian poet Rolf Jacobsen (1907-1994) .  His poem "Sand" reminded...
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Saturday, January 12, 2013

Because the mind circles an idea

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Besides eight books of poetry and a memoir, California poet Lucille Lang Day has co-authored a textbook, How to Encourage Girls in Math and...
Thursday, January 10, 2013

Tomorrow in San Diego -- Math Poetry Event

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If you are in San Diego tomorrow, I hope you will attend: A Reading of Poetry with Mathematics 5 – 7 PM    Friday, January 11, 2013 ...
Tuesday, January 8, 2013

New poems from old by substitution

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     Just as we get new numbers by substitution of new inputs into old formulas -- such as x² or sinx -- we may get new poems from old ones ...
Sunday, January 6, 2013

Cities of Mathematics

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Judith Johnson 's multi-part poem, "Cities of Mathematics and Desire" is geometric in its descriptive power; scenes are constr...
Friday, January 4, 2013

Geometry of a Gun

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Despite the recent news media chatter about a "fiscal cliff," the event that we can't (and mustn't) stop thinking about is...
Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Happy New Year 2013

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One of the questions that may be asked about our new year is whether 2013 is composite or prime -- that is, whether it does or does not have...

2012 posts -- titles and links

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Scroll down to find titles and dates of posts in 2012 -- and, at the bottom, links to posts all the way back through 2011 to March 2010 when...
Sunday, December 30, 2012

A chance encounter

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     I invite you to celebrate the coming of the new year 2013 with a poem I like a lot.      Alberta poet Alice Major produces poems that...
Friday, December 28, 2012

Explorers

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Those who know mathematics but do not immerse in it daily often use its terms in contexts that surprise and delight.  I smiled with apprecia...
Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Support STREET SENSE

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Street Sense is "The DC Metro Area Street Newspaper" and it is available from vendors in the Washington, DC area -- vendors who a...
Monday, December 24, 2012

Star, shine bright!

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* on top give light freely forever abundant brilliant everywhere Be our light! For more visual poetry of Christmas, enjoy a visit t...
Friday, December 21, 2012

Skating (with math) on Christmas

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     Found at poets.org , a lovely poem of ice skating and mathematics and Christmas by Cynthia Zarin; the title is "Skating in Harlem,...
Tuesday, December 18, 2012

The magic of "i"

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  An exciting math event occurred last week -- the opening of MoMath ,  a Manhattan museum that makes math fun.   Still thinking about...
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Sunday, December 16, 2012

Imagine new numbers

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     As a child I wrote poems but abandoned the craft until many years later when I was a math professor; at that later time some of my poem...
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Wednesday, December 12, 2012

The important 1 (multiplicative identity)

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On this day 12/12/12, I have heard much media discussion concerning coincidences of number .  My own thoughts continue to examine the multi...
Sunday, December 9, 2012

Loss of Identity

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     Some of the richness of a poem comes from the multiple meanings available for the poet's words.  We read "line" and think...
Wednesday, December 5, 2012

That's so random! (NPR, OEDILF, etc.)

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     One of the challenges I face in friendly conversations is not to overreact to a "misuse" of the word random .  When I hear s...
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Sunday, December 2, 2012

Rearranging words

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After posting, on November 15 , three stanzas by Darby Larson -- three of the more than six quadrillion stanzas that result from arrangement...
Thursday, November 29, 2012

Bold women count

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Last evening at a poetry reading at Kensington Row Bookshop , I read my poem about Sophia Kovalevsky ( posted on June 24 ); hearing it out l...
Sunday, November 25, 2012

Lincoln and Euclid -- common notions

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     This afternoon I enjoyed the recently-released film , Lincoln -- appreciating Sally Fields as Mary Todd, Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus ...
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Friday, November 23, 2012

Women Scientists in America

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That one, Mary Gray ,  is bold, mathematical, and female.  One of the founders (one-nine-seven-one) of the Association for ...
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Thursday, November 22, 2012

Thank you, Mary Gray

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For today, Thanksgiving, I have wanted to prepare a special poetic tribute and thank-you to mathematician Mary Gray .  I have had yet not fo...
Sunday, November 18, 2012

A permutation puzzle -- the sestina

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In a sestina, line-ending words are repeated in six six-line stanzas in a designated permutation of the words; the thirty-nine-line poem end...
Thursday, November 15, 2012

Rearranging words . . .

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     If we count all possible arrangements of 18 words, the total number of these is 18! (18-factorial) and equal to 6,402,373,705,728,000 -...
Monday, November 12, 2012

Finding fault with a sphere . . .

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     On November 9 I had the pleasure (hosted by Irina Mitrea and Maria Lorenz ) of talking (" Thirteen Ways that Math and Poetry Conn...
Saturday, November 10, 2012

Symmetry in poetry

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In Euclidean Geometry, objects retain their size and shape during rigid motions (also called symmetries ); one of these is translation -- ...
Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Word Play -- "Of Time and the Line"

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Charles Bernstein , poet and teacher,  experiments with poetry   and prefers "opaque" and "impermeable" writing -- to aw...
Friday, November 2, 2012

Storm Sandy -- and climate change

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     That      storm      Sandy      has caused more      people to believe      climate change is real and awful      than the piles of sta...
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...
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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...