Monday, November 30, 2015

Sustainability needs the arts AND mathematics . . .

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The following poem is by Erica Jolly -- an Australian poet and retired teacher who is working hard to have the arts and the sciences integr...
Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Thanksgiving, 2015

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Thinking toward Thanksgiving Day tomorrow, I am grateful for  --  in addition to my children and grandchildren who will gather --  all ...
Monday, November 23, 2015

Quoting Isaac Newton . . . . a "found" poem

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     I do not know what      I may appear to the world;      but to myself I seem to have been      only like a boy playing on the seash...
Thursday, November 19, 2015

Axiom: A Mathematics of Poetry

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Today in a Facebook posting by Susanne Pumpluen  I learned of Discov-her , an online journal  featuring stories about women in Scienc...
Monday, November 16, 2015

Encouragement from fathers, a second view

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     Despite the importance of fathers' encouragement (as noted in my post on 13 November ), some women oppose their fathers' views....
Friday, November 13, 2015

Encouragement from fathers

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     It was my observation as a professor in a mostly-male mathematics department that the men who joined me in supporting opportunities for...
Monday, November 9, 2015

Limericks for Hedy Lamarr

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     When seeking to draft a poem quickly, it is useful to have some sort of pattern to follow -- a pattern helping to dictate word choice. ...
Thursday, November 5, 2015

It is clear that . . .

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     " If I stand "      by Inger Christensen   (Denmark, 1935-2009)                If I stand                alone in the snow...
Monday, November 2, 2015

Artificial Intelligence in the Library . . .

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     Libraries are wonderful places and library book sales are temptations impossible to resist -- and so, during a recent trip to Boston an...
Thursday, October 29, 2015

Mathematics and Poetry ARE Similar

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        A recent email request sent me looking for a one-page article / quiz I had published in the American Mathematical Monthly in 1992 -...
Tuesday, October 27, 2015

The magic of mathematics (in art)

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     Australian teacher and  poet Erica Jolly is convinced that breaking down the barriers that make silos of sciences and humanities subj...
Friday, October 23, 2015

JMM Seattle, 1-7-16 -- Poetry+Math+Art

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 Read your mathy poems in Seattle ! An invitation to participate -- in January!   Read on!  ANNOUNCING Poetry + Art + Math  January ...
Monday, October 19, 2015

Celebrating waves of light . . .

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     On October 8, Scotland's celebration of National Poetry Day had the theme "Light."  An online collection of themed poems...
Thursday, October 15, 2015

Use a phone App to find mathy poems

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A day late, Happy Birthday, E. E. Cummings   (b 14 October 1894, d 3 September 1962).      One of my favorite poetry sites is PoetryF...
Thursday, October 8, 2015

Daughter and Father - a warm geometry . . .

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     Kate Stange is a mathematician -- from the Canadian province of Ontario and now at the University of Colorado -- whose father, Ken Sta...

Toward Infinity . . .

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     During summer teaching opportunities a dozen or more years ago in Deva, Romania I met Doru Radu who taught English there -- and our mut...
Sunday, October 4, 2015

A mathematician's favorite poet

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     A summertime gift book that I have much enjoyed reading is Love & Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality by Edward Frenkel (Basic Book...
Monday, September 28, 2015

A subtraction problem

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Let's solve this subtraction problem:                     Women do the job             minus    the recognition.                  ...
Thursday, September 24, 2015

C K Williams -- Three Mile Island

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A poet whose work I have long enjoyed, C K Williams   (1936-1915), died a few days ago.  (You may find a generous sample of his poems online...
Monday, September 21, 2015

Choosing what words mean . . .

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     Nineteenth century writer and mathematician Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) gave his character, Humpty Dumpty, these words :  "When I u...
Friday, September 18, 2015

Words of Ada Lovelace

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The se po etic words of Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) -- concerning translation of mathematical principles into practical forms -- I found here ...
Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Shaping sentences with Fibonacci numbers . . .

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Counting words . . ..        1                 One      1                person      2                with courage      3              ...
Friday, September 11, 2015

Songs of mathematics . . .

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     Larry Lesser is a songwriter who uses lyrics for teaching as well as entertainment.  A varied sample of his creations for doing this a...
Tuesday, September 8, 2015

It starts with counting . . .

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Mathematical imagery is one of the many features I enjoy in the work of Canadian environmental scientist and poet Madhur Anand .  Here is a ...
Thursday, September 3, 2015

Mathematical Modeling

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My friend and colleague, University of Connecticut mathematician Sarah Glaz , is an accomplished poet and is active in coordinating math-poe...
Monday, August 31, 2015

The answer is NO

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This past weekend I have much enjoyed reading Mathematics:  a novel   by Jacques Roubaud   (Dalkey Archive Press, reprint 2010, translated f...
Thursday, August 27, 2015

Hate Math -- 21 Reasons (NOT) . . .

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Two four-letter words that I want NEVER to be used TOGETHER are hate and math .  A lively contradiction to my wish is provided by the follo...
Sunday, August 23, 2015

Three (or fewer) choices

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Here is a link to an anthology of English translations of work by Chilean poet and mathematician, Nicanor Parra .   Some rank Nicanor Segun...
Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Caught in an infinite loop . . ..

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Philadelphian Marion Cohen has been a mathematician since girlhood and a poet almost that long.  Besides her mathematics and writing, she t...
Friday, August 14, 2015

Primes and a paradox

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       Canadian poet Alice Major has loved and admired science and mathematics since girlhood and this background brings to her mathy poems...
2 comments:
Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Reservation Mathematics

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Both a talented writer and an articulate conveyor of the culture of American Indians, Sherman Alexie is a Spokane / Coeur d’Alene Indian f...
2 comments:
Monday, August 10, 2015

Found on Facebook

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A numerical poem, recently found on Facebook -- at this link :  
Thursday, August 6, 2015

Buffalo 66

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     Nearly twenty years ago, in the formative years of River Poets (in Bloomsburg, PA), Jim Murray from Shamokin, then a student at Bloom...
Monday, August 3, 2015

MatHEmatics / MatSHEmatics

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     Last week at the 2015 BRIDGES Math-Arts Conference in Baltimore I gave a short talk on using poetry to celebrate and inspire math girl...
Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Algebra (sort of) in a short story

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  Tomorrow I head to Baltimore for the BRIDGES Math-Arts Conference. Explore the conference program at this link .  Would love to see you...
2 comments:
Saturday, July 25, 2015

Math and Poetry and Climate

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Canadian poet Madhur Anand is also an Environmental Scientist; her love of nature and concerns for preserving a habitable climate pervade h...
Tuesday, July 21, 2015

The culture for women in math and the sciences

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Perhaps the phrase "ordinary" women scientists is an oxymoron -- but it should not be.  Women should be free to populate the full...
Sunday, July 19, 2015

Terror/Mathematics

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Several friends have sent me links to the poem " Terror/Mathematics " by Zeina Hashem Beck -- written after the beheading of 21 Ch...
Thursday, July 16, 2015

Celebrating Ada Lovelace

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Recently I have purchased the anthology, Raising Lilly Ledbetter:  Women Poets Occupying the Workplace (edited by Caroline Wright, M.L. Lyo...
Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Visual-mathematical poetry

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      The poems that I write and most of the poems that I include in this blog use mathematical patterns to structure their lines and stanza...
1 comment:
Saturday, July 11, 2015

Math fun with song lyrics

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Song-writer Bill Calhoun is a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics at Pennsylvania's Bloom...
Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Things to Count On

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Tomorrow is my mother's birthday.  Born in 1912, she has been gone for several years now -- and tomorrow my sons and I will travel to In...
Monday, July 6, 2015

Counting Years -- in p'Bitek's Song of Lawino

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Okot p'Bitek (1931-1982) was a Ugandan poet; one of his central concerns was that African literature should be built on African rather ...
Friday, July 3, 2015

A Voice Meant to be Spoken

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     Last month the Library of Congress named a new poet laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera , a Californian and Mexican-American whose work often...
Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Sex, Maths, and the Brain

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I found this poetry in an abstract (with a link posted at "Women in Maths" on Facebook ) for a lecture by Professor Gina Rippon e...
Monday, June 29, 2015

Celebrating angles and rainbows . . .

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                              C          E        L        E        B   M A R R I A G E        A     A        T     Y     ...
Saturday, June 27, 2015

The power of eleven

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One of my recent poetry acquisition treasures is Measure for Measure:  An Anthology of Poetic Meters , edited by Annie Finch and Alexandra O...
Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Found poetry -- Mary Cartwright

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Recently I have been reading about mathematician Mary Cartwright (1900-1998) and working to develop a poem about her -- relying on a fine a...
Monday, June 22, 2015

Uncertainty . . .

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     Sometimes we find things of great value when we are looking for something else -- in fact, Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges has sai...
Sunday, June 21, 2015

Seeing the NEWS in square stanzas

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Reading today's Washington Post, a surprising statistic:                Sharks don't kill                as   many               ...
Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Judith Grabiner and Howard Nemerov

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     Last evening at the Distinguished Lecture Series sponsored by the MAA it was my privilege to hear an outstanding presentation by Judit...
Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Imagine a Fractal

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California poet Carol Dorf is also a math teacher and is poetry editor of the online journal TalkingWriting .  In the most recent issue of...
Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Square stanzas for Women in Maths

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Women in Maths -- it all adds up.      Go here for "It All Adds Up" -- a story in plus Magazine by Rachel Thomas ...
Friday, June 5, 2015

A portrait of TB in numbers

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Poet Sarah Browning recently directed me to "Tuberculosis in Numbers," a fine poem by M. Brett Gaffney that appears in the latest...