Saturday, February 28, 2015

Reflections on Logic

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Miroslav Holub (1923-1998), Czech poet and immunologist who excelled in both endeavors, is one of my favorite poets.  He combines scientifi...
Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Found poetry - words of Dirac

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The epigraph for Richard Bready's " Times of Sand " (a stanza of which I posted a few days ago on 21 February ) is a quote fro...
Saturday, February 21, 2015

How many grains of sand?

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     Sand beaches are places I love to walk.  Next to oceans and soft underfoot.  Below I post a stanza from Richard Bready's " ...
Monday, February 16, 2015

The numbers say it all . . .

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The title of my posting today, "The numbers say it all" comes from the final line of "After Leviticus," by Detroit poet ...
Friday, February 13, 2015

America, land of equals (perhaps)

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Preparing to celebrate (after Valentine's Day ) Presidents' Day , remembering particularly George Washington (b February 22, 1732) a...
Monday, February 9, 2015

Surreal parabola, Mobius strip

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     When a math term appears in a poem, will its usage make sense to a mathematician? Some mathematical folks are critical of poetic use o...
Friday, February 6, 2015

Celebrate Black History, Valentine's Day

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February is Black History Month and on the 14th we celebrate love with Valentine's Day.  To find in this blog a variety of mathy poems...
Thursday, February 5, 2015

Moebius Strip

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Following a lead from Francisco , I found ( here ) this tiny poem by Michael Hessel-Mial :        moebius strip        a belt of clouds   ...
Monday, February 2, 2015

Is winter half over?

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     Today (February 2) those of us with roots in Pennsylvania join enthusiasts from everywhere as we  look to mythical groundhog Punxsutawn...
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...
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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...