Thursday, March 31, 2016

The Future of Prediction

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     As well as being National Poetry Month, April is Mathematics Awareness Month and this year's theme is " The Future of Predict...
Monday, March 28, 2016

Contemplating the heavens

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English writer G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was a poet but was better known for his pithy sayings.   For example, we have the following st...
Wednesday, March 23, 2016

The Shape of the World -- a dream of equality

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     One of the most vital components of the Washington DC poetry scene is Split This Rock -- an  organization that speaks and acts against...
Monday, March 21, 2016

World Poetry Day -- Celebrate favorites!

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     Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave      Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;        Quietly they go, the...
Friday, March 18, 2016

Poems that Count

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On January 6 of this year I attended a wonderful poetry reading (sponsored by The Word Works ) that featured the work of poets Tera Ragan a...
Wednesday, March 16, 2016

A poem is an equation?

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     Exiled Romanian poet Nina Cassian (1924-2014) spoke with a daring and imaginative voice that I have much admired.  And she occasionall...
Friday, March 11, 2016

Celebrate Math Women

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     March is Women's History Month and, although this year's theme focuses on women in public service and government , my own thou...
Monday, March 7, 2016

Inspired by Pi

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     Last year, a few days after Pi-Day, my email had a link (Thanks, Paul Geiger !) to an example of Pilish -- this one a circle poem by M...
Thursday, March 3, 2016

Arnold diffusion (and poets of Romania)

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     I have had the good fortune to attend two BIRS Math / Creative Writing workshops in Banff (most recently in January 2016) and one of t...
Monday, February 29, 2016

The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance

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     Audre Lorde  (1934-1992)  is one of my favorite poets; links to my previous postings of her work in this blog are given below.  Here is...
Thursday, February 25, 2016

Links to Favorites

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     According to Google, these posts are the top ten favorites of visitors to this blog in the six years since my first posting in March, 2...
Monday, February 22, 2016

Newton, Einstein, Gravity, Poetry

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     Recent discovery of gravitational waves has put Einstein (1878-1955) -- and even Newton (1643-1727) -- into recent news, and a visit ...
Thursday, February 18, 2016

Euler formula poem

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     Sometimes I try to write a poem that explains a mathematical concept -- it's a difficult task  My effort usually results in someth...
Monday, February 15, 2016

How Old Is the Rose-Red City?

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     Most of Martin Gardner 's fans are avid puzzler's -- my connection with him is also one of admiration (he was a thoughtful pers...
Thursday, February 11, 2016

Visit JHM for Mathy Poems

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     Today I'd like to direct you to the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics , an online open-access journal that features poetry in each ...
Sunday, February 7, 2016

Using a Fano plane to create a poem

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     South Dakota mathematician Daniel May enjoys finding connections between his discipline and other arts -- and herein we consider a con...
Thursday, February 4, 2016

Visiting the Australian Poetry Library

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     An Australian poet ( Erica Jolly ) whom I have met through this blog has helped me to learn about the great variety of poetry and relat...
Sunday, January 31, 2016

A sonnet for Napoleon's Theorem

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     In geometry, Napoleon's theorem ( often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769–1821) states that if equilateral triangles are cons...
Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Rabbis should learn to solve quadratics

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     Thanks to mathemagician Colm Mulcahy who connected me with poet Lisa Dordal -- and thanks to her for permission to offer these lines,...
Monday, January 25, 2016

Tartaglia solving the cubic -- in verse

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     Mathematical historians now credit both Cardano and Tartaglia with the formula to solve cubic equations, referring to it as the "...
2 comments:
Saturday, January 23, 2016

Not good at math . . .

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     Connecticut poet Joan Cannon is a senior who laments her lin gering anxiety over mathematics in her poem, "Humility," below...
Thursday, January 21, 2016

Math Anxiety

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     Recent comments from a friend describing anxiety that seems to freeze his attempts to understand and use a new mathematical concept hav...
Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Soon it will be February -- and Valentine's Day

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     Looking back :  on February 12, 2011 I posted math-poetry suggestions for Valentine's Day at this link: Loving a mathematician (Va...
Sunday, January 17, 2016

Poetry from a math teacher's son

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     In an earlier post I have noted how effectively mathematicians and their mathematics may be described by poets who are in the same fam...
Tuesday, January 12, 2016

A sonnet for W.R.Hamilton

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      Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865) was also a poet (see, for example, this sonnet in a prior posting (13 October...
Friday, January 8, 2016

The world is round . . . or flat!

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British poet Wendy Cope frequently includes edgy humor in her poems ( s he is, indeed, a prizewinner in light verse ) -- and I like that. ...
3 comments:
Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Counting those who grieve . . .

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Each day's email brings me a Poem-a-Day from Poets.org and today's selection by Matthew Olzmann considers the tragedies from gun-...
Saturday, January 2, 2016

Math is Brewing . . .

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For one of my granddaughters who likes poems, I recently purchased If You're Not Here, Please Raise Your Hand:  Poems about School by Ka...

2015 (and prior) -- titles, dates, links for posts

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If you wi sh to easily BROWSE p ast po stings . . . Scroll down to find titles and dates and links to post ings in 2015.   OR follow...
Thursday, December 31, 2015

Precision leads to poetry . . .

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As the year ends, a quote from one of my once-favorite authors, Don DeLillo (in correspondence with David Foster Wallace -- whose Infinite ...
Monday, December 28, 2015

Can a woman learn science (or mathematics)?

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It is not a new idea that women do not have scientific aptitude, that teaching them requires special accommodation.  Here, in a poem by one ...
Thursday, December 24, 2015

And now welcome Christmas . . .

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Let us sing . . . (a version of)  The Twelve Days of Christmas           The twelfth day of Christmas.           My true love gave to ...
Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Let us not forget . . .

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At this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, many are without shelter -- and are cold.  Let us think of them  -- as Cecil Day-Lewis (190...
Sunday, December 20, 2015

Who put the pie in Pythagoras?

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Irish poet and physicist Iggy McGovern has written both humorous and serious verse.  Today we have lines from him that startle and amuse -...
Friday, December 18, 2015

A student writes poetry for a math class . . .

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A recent fun experience for me has been correspondence with Melanie Simms , a poet and math student at Pennsylvania's Bloomsburg Univers...
Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Generalized Pythagorean Theorem--a visual poem?

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While thinking about my December 13 posting featuring work by Richard Kostelanetz -- visual poetry with numbers -- I was browsing a fascina...
1 comment:
Sunday, December 13, 2015

Visual poems with numbers

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     I have a good friend who does not care for the sorts of poetry that are written today.  When I asked what he likes he cited " When...
Friday, December 11, 2015

Alphamath - poetry built on 4, 8

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Since the late 1960s Toronto poet Victor Coleman has been energetically committed to innovated poetic practices.  A fine introduction to th...
Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Colorful mathematics for your smartphone

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     "Bhaskara II (1114-1185) was an Indian mathematician and astronomer. He composed the Siddhanta Siromani , a treatise in four parts...
Sunday, December 6, 2015

This blog (then and now) and Pascal

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     When I began this blog in 2010, I imagined up to 100 postings -- I saw it as a way to share math-related poetry that I had written an...
Thursday, December 3, 2015

Which hat? (from Slovenia)

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     For a long time I have highly valued the work of Eastern European poets -- including Wislawa Szymborska , Miroslav Holub , Nichita Stan...
Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Are we speaking of "mathematics" or "poetry"?

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     This week started with the excitement of an email message from Evelyn Lamb with a link to her Scientific American blog where she crea...