Friday, January 30, 2015

Twined Arcs, Defying Euclid

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     The English language has adopted into current usage many terms from other languages.  French terms like coup de grace and haut monde ...
Monday, January 26, 2015

Poetry-math images; Expectation

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     Search engines are very useful in my search for mathy poets and poems.  Recently I have noticed that a link to images   has been offer...
Thursday, January 22, 2015

Girls who like math

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Often I think about the interactions of girls with mathematics and recently I have been feeling delighted that all of my school-age granddau...
Sunday, January 18, 2015

Probability and Coincidence

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     On page 26 of my copy of the latest New Yorker is a poem by Lia Purpura entitled " Probability ."  In her brief poem Purpur...
2 comments:
Wednesday, January 14, 2015

To add two and two

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     Today I call attention again (as in my post for 6 January, 2015 ) to the extensive  Science-Poetry collection edited by Norman Hugh R...
2 comments:
Saturday, January 10, 2015

Opposites, Balance

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     Recently, and perhaps always, opposites have interested me.  For example, the complementary and sometimes  conflicting nuggets of advic...
2 comments:
Thursday, January 8, 2015

The Geometry of Winter, with Eagles

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A poetry-listening opportunity in the Washington, DC area : Poet Martin Dickinson will read from his new collection, My Concept of Time ...
Tuesday, January 6, 2015

from MIT Science-Poetry -- The Cal-Dif-Fluk Saga

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     Recently I have enjoyed browsing a voluminous online 19th century Science-Poetry collection ( Watchers of the Moon ) hosted by MIT, gat...
Saturday, January 3, 2015

The Role of Zero

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     In mathematics, as in poetry, multiple meanings are common and create power for the language.   For example, the number 0 is an idempot...

2014 (and prior) -- titles, dates of posts

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Scroll down to find titles and dates of posts in 2014.  At the bottom are links to lists of posts through 2013 and 2012 and 2011 -- and ...
Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Be someone TO COUNT ON in 2015

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By any means of counting,  the number of incarcerated persons in the United States  is TOO LARGE and the proportion of prisoners wi...
2 comments:
Sunday, December 28, 2014

A Fractal Poem

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    A fractal is an object that displays self-similarity -- roughly, this means that the parts have the same shape as the whole -- as in th...
4 comments:
Thursday, December 25, 2014

A thousand Christmas trees

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My email poem-a-day today from www.poets.org is " Christmas Trees " by Robert Frost (1874-1963) ; this 1916 poem includes some c...
Wednesday, December 24, 2014

The gift of a poem

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     In this holiday season of giving, sometimes the gifts are poems -- and sometimes mathy poems.  A few days ago, "Zero" by Robe...
1 comment:
Saturday, December 20, 2014

The Girl Who Loved Triangles

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     I found this poem by Michigan poet Jackie Bartley when I was browsing old issues of  albatross (edited by Richard Smyth ) and she has...
Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Fractals -- poems and photos

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     Marc Frantz and Annalisa Crannell have written about mathematics and art ( Viewpoints:  Mathematical Perspectives and Fractal Geometr...
1 comment:
Saturday, December 13, 2014

Our curve is a parabola

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Found in the essay, " Intellect " (1841) --  these words by 19th century American philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-...
Wednesday, December 10, 2014

A mathy Haiku

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Found at the froth magazine website, this Haiku by Christopher Daniel Wallbank . Mathematics I, mathematics, One plus root five over 2...
Saturday, December 6, 2014

A scientist writes of scientists

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     Wilkes-Barre poet Richard Aston is many-faceted -- a teacher, an engineer, a textbook author, a technical writer.  And Aston writes of...
Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Poet as mathematician

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     Lillian Morrison (1917-2014) was a NYC poet and librarian whose work I first met in the poetry-with-math anthology, Against Infinity ....
Sunday, November 30, 2014

Geometry of Love

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     A couple of weeks ago my "Google Alert" linked me to a posting of a science poem concerning "the geometry of love."...
Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Giving thanks for poems

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     As Thanksgiving approaches I am thankful not only for many blessings but also for the numbers I use to count them -- eight grandchildre...
Friday, November 21, 2014

The Math Lady Sings

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     One of my daily emails results from a Google Alert -- which I have set up to let me know of new web-postings (or old information newly...
Tuesday, November 18, 2014

In Praise of Fractals

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     Philosopher Emily Grosholz is also a poet -- a poet who often writes of mathematics. Tessellations Publishing has recently (2014) pub...
Friday, November 14, 2014

Imaginary Number

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Last week (on November 6) I was invited to read some of my poems at the River Poets reading in Bloomsburg, PA ( where I lived and taught ...
Tuesday, November 11, 2014

In college she studied mathematics

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     In the third paragraph of the Wikipedia bio for Marguerite Duras (1914-1996), we read "At 17, Marguerite went to France, her pare...
Sunday, November 9, 2014

Composite or Prime?

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 Her age  is 9.   Is that 9 composite or prime?      I have a wonderful collection of grandchildren and am continually on the l...
Wednesday, November 5, 2014

A big voice, Galway Kinnell (1927-2014)

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     Last week master poet Galway Kinnell died ( NYTimes obituary ).  One finds a detailed bio and a baker’s dozen of his best poems at the ...
Sunday, November 2, 2014

Poetry from the words of Lord Kelvin

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Do not imagine that mathematics  is hard and crabbed, and repulsive  to common sense.  It is merely the etherealization of common...
Thursday, October 30, 2014

Tomorrow is Halloween

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Typing Halloween in this blog's SEARCH Box will lead you to a 2010 posting of "Ghost Stories Written"  -- an algebra-related p...
Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Counting into the Future . . .

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     Remember that you have only until November 1 to submit a winning "poem of provocation and witness" to the Split This Rock Poe...
Sunday, October 26, 2014

Dimensions of Discovery

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Along the one-dimensional straight line there are points and segments but no curves or squares. In the flat plane of two dimensions  t...
Thursday, October 23, 2014

ABC of statistics

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     Songwriter Larry Lesser is a co-organizer (with Gizem Karaali ) of a poetry-with-mathematics reading at the Joint Mathematics Meeting...
Monday, October 20, 2014

Martin Gardner collected poems

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     Last week the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) had a special program honoring Martin Gardner (1914-2010); tomorrow (October 21...
2 comments:
Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Poetry Reading 1-11-15 at JMM in San Antonio

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You are invited to a poetry reading  sponsored by the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics at the 2015 Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM) ...
Friday, October 10, 2014

Taken out of context . . .

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Sometimes good lines fit so well into their poems that their individual merits go unrecognized.  And then, taken out of context, they can le...
Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Love Physics

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It turns out that one of the disadvantages of a long-term blog with lots of worthy material is that sometimes I lose track of fine work that...
Saturday, October 4, 2014

Can poetry change the climate for frogs?

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      Poems affect our spirits as well as our minds. And Split This Rock is looking for poems that protest and witness, world-changing poem...
Sunday, September 28, 2014

Journal of Math in the Arts features Poetry

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A special issue of the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts entitled "Poetry and Mathematics" is now available online at this link...
Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Clearing the Air with a Poem

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     Every poem has a climate -- a collection of emotional tones that overlay and underlay its words. Today -- as the U.N. meets in NY to di...
Saturday, September 20, 2014

Marching for Climate

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     Today I want to call attention to the growing global concern about climate change accentuated by the United Nations Climate Summit that...
Monday, September 15, 2014

Remembering Lee Lorch

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      Lee Lorch was a mathematician known for his social activism on behalf of black Americans as well as for his mathematics. He died in ...
Thursday, September 11, 2014

Hailstone numbers shape a poem

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     One of my favorite mathy poets is Halifax mathematician Robert Dawson -- his work is complex and inventive, and fun to puzzle over.  D...
Sunday, September 7, 2014

Hypertext poetry

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     We computer-screen readers all know hypertext; when we read along in Wikipedia or some other online document and come across an underl...
Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Mathy poems via e-mail

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Publishing a blog about poetry and mathematics brings me new connections -- it is not unusual for a day to begin with an email from another ...
Saturday, August 30, 2014

Mathy Poetry from Bridges 2014

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     This year's math-arts conference, Bridges 2014 , was in Korea.  And a dozen of us who write poetry-with-mathematics -- unable to at...
Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Grandma Got STEM

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     It was my good fortune last weekend to meet the sister-in-law of one of my neighbors, mathematician and Harvey Mudd professor, Rachel L...
Saturday, August 23, 2014

Changing colors, counting syllables

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Changing Colors by JoAnne Growney Blue yoyo -- awkwardly stopping-starting, rising-plummeting, seeking self-control. Ple...
Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Poetry in Math Journals

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         The Mathematical Intelligencer (publisher of the poem by Gizem Karaali given below) and the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics...
Friday, August 15, 2014

My best dream is floating . . .

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     Today I want to urge you to visit several sites in addition to my blog.  For example, there is the recent announcement of 2014 Fields M...
1 comment:
Monday, August 11, 2014

Narrated by a mathematician

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Recently translated by Adam Morris, the novel With My Dog-Eyes (Melville House, 2014) by Brazilian writer Hilda Hilst (1930-2004) is narrat...
Friday, August 8, 2014

Squaring the Circle

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Reminding us of the ancient unsolvable problem that so many attempted, the July/August 2014 issue of Poetry Magazine contains "Squari...
Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Divided selves, some of them savvy

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     For social connections, it is desirable not to be pegged as a member of an outcast group.  And thus a mathematician is likely to have a...
Sunday, August 3, 2014

A math prof's lament

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The mathematical connection for this poem is the fact that it was inspired by regrets for a missed opportunity in a mathematics class -- an ...
Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Fixing something wrong

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          If there's something           wrong with the third           act,   it's   really           in  the  first  act. Th...
Sunday, July 27, 2014

Each equation is a playful catch . . .

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A mathematician is probably too close to her subject matter to speak playfully about it -- and thus she, even more than others, appreciates...
Friday, July 25, 2014

Poems with "equation" in the title

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     One of the ways to explore this blog is to go to the right hand column and find the instruction, SEARCH .      A few moments ago I did...