Saturday, December 31, 2016

Happy New Year! -- Resolve to REWARD WOMEN!

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     My December 27 post celebrated the life of Vera Rubin (b 1928) who died on Christmas Day -- and a more recent Washington Post article...
Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Celebrate Vera Rubin -- a WOMAN of science!

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     This morning's Washington Post carried an obituary of Vera Rubin ( 1928-2016),  a pioneering astronomer who confirmed the existenc...
Monday, December 26, 2016

Post-Christmas reflections from W. H. Auden

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     A favorite writer whose works I enjoy again and again is English poet Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973). Here is a mathy excerpt from a ver...
Monday, December 19, 2016

Numbers for Christmas . . .

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* o n t o p g i v e l i g h t f r e e l y f o r e v e r a b u n d a n t b r i l l i a n t e v e r y w h e r e LOVE MATH! Christmas ...
Thursday, December 15, 2016

Remembering Thomas Schelling (1921-2016)

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     On December 13, Nobel-prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling (b 1921) died .  I had the privilege of meeting this outstanding scholar...
Monday, December 12, 2016

When one isn't enough ... words from a Cuban poet

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     Last week I traveled (as part of an organized people-to-people program) to Cuba.  I will need many days to sort and digest and organize...
Monday, November 28, 2016

Celebrate MATH-POETRY at JMM (1-5-17) in Atlanta

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     Repeating what has become an annual tradition, the Joint Mathematics Meetings of 2017 in Atlanta will include a poetry reading.  Thu...
Friday, November 25, 2016

Number-rhymes from Muriel Spark

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     A dozen years ago I visited Edinburgh and there became acquainted with the poetry of Scottish writer Muriel Spark (1918-2006)  -- prior...
Monday, November 21, 2016

An immeasurable continuum

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This poem by Emily Warn (a founder of PoetryFoundation.org ) uses mathematical terminology to introduce us to the immeasurable horror of de...
1 comment:
Friday, November 18, 2016

A well-constructed language

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     California math teacher, poet and editor, Carol Dorf is a vital force in the production and dissemination of mathy poems.  A blog SEARC...
Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Poetry and Protest

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      One of the fine new anthologies of 2016 is Of Poetry and Protest:  From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin , published by W W Norton -- pu...
Wednesday, November 9, 2016

So much depends on . . . normality

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<<   >>      I found an lovely little autumn poem ( after William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow" ) by Mi...
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Monday, November 7, 2016

Happy Birthday, Marie Curie

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Today, November 7, is the birthday of Marie Curie (1867-1934, Nobel pri ze in physi cs, 1903 ).  Curie is celebrated in this poem by Richar...
Thursday, November 3, 2016

Calculating costs of pollution ... and other news

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     Recently I was browsing through an oldish collection, The Best American Poetry 1999 (edited by Robert Bly ) where I found and liked th...
Monday, October 24, 2016

Geometry -- in art and poetry

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     St. Louis poet Constance Levy is an acclaimed author of children's poetry -- I found her poem "Madinat as Salam" (includ...
Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Make Something of Nothing ... with Bob Dylan

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     The puzzle of nothing actually being something is central to our use of numbers -- and I use it today as an excuse to link to a Bob D...
Saturday, October 15, 2016

Have a Happy "Hamilton Day"

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 April 15-23, 2016 is Maths Week in Ireland .        AND, as this recent Slate article by Katharine Merow announces, in Ireland Octobe...
Friday, October 14, 2016

From order to chaos -- "Fig Tree Rag"

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     Robert Dawson , a mathematician and poet from Halifax, Nova Scotia, is wide-ranging in the mathematics that he includes in poetry.  He...
Tuesday, October 11, 2016

She argued for Newton's physics

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     Here, by Voltaire , is a poem about mathematician/scientist Émilie du Châtelet (1706-1749) -- who explained Newton's physics but w...
Thursday, October 6, 2016

Be astonished -- National Poetry Day (British)

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Today I celebrate British partnership with Romanian poetry!      One of the internet treasures I have found is to Contemporary Literature ...
Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Generating a sonnet -- human vs computer

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     News last month from UC Berkeley's School of Information described a computer that writes poetry. In particular, it writes sonnets...
1 comment:
Wednesday, September 28, 2016

A Nest of Worlds -- in verse by Margaret Cavendish

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     Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673) was an English aristocrat, scientist, writer and philosopher .  The following interesting and charming ...
Monday, September 26, 2016

The Bloomsburg Fair -- with theorems and lies . . .

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     Along the north branch of the Susquehanna River in east-central Pennsylvania lies the town of Bloomsburg -- known for Bloomsburg Univer...
Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Math-woman, be bold!

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     During these days in which discrimination against math-women happens again and again I have wanted to write a poem that celebrates us ....
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Monday, September 19, 2016

A rumor (in verse) about Alfred Nobel

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 Before the poem a bit of history about its source of publication:      The Humanistic Mathematics Network Newsletter (HMNN) was founde...
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Thursday, September 15, 2016

Keyboard characters make a poem . . .

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     Here's poem found in an old email from my Bloomsburg friend, Janice B.  Its authors turn out to be Fred Bremmer and Steve Kroese ...
Tuesday, September 13, 2016

A Fib (a perfect circle) -- and some math-po links

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    1      Not      1      one      2      circle     3      is perfect     5      yet the idea     8      of circle's useful ever...
Friday, September 9, 2016

Division by Zero

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     At Victoria University in Melbourne, novelist, playwright and poet Tom Petsinis also teaches mathematics.  He participated in the 2016...
Tuesday, September 6, 2016

A counting rhyme, a riddle

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     During the summer I had lots of activities with grandchildren -- they all love to read and one of the books we enjoyed together was Cou...
Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Twelveness -- a Fibonacci poem from G4G

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      Science writer, philosopher, and skeptic Martin Gardner (1914-2010) is perhaps best known for his long-running Scientific American c...
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Monday, August 29, 2016

Math-play via verse (with George Darley)

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A recent email from Colm Mulcahy -- who seeks out all things Irish -- alerted me to Dublin poet and math-text author, George Darley (1795-1...
Thursday, August 25, 2016

Numbers and Faces - poem, anthology

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  "Numbers and Faces" is the title of a poem by W. H. Auden that ends with these lines :             True, between faces almost ...
Monday, August 22, 2016

Math-poetry connects with Carol Burnett

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     When I began teaching mathematics my students compared me -- to my delight -- with Carol Burnett .  Recent thoughts of this amazing com...
Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Swim, Girl, Swim -- thirty-five miles

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     Today's poem uses a single number ( 35 ) as it celebrates Gertrude Ederle (1905-2003), an Olympic (1924) swimmer and (in 1926) Eng...
Monday, August 15, 2016

Find math-poetry links in BRIDGES archives

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     As noted in last week's posts, the annual international math-arts festival, BRIDGES, recently was held in Finland.  Now the archive...
Thursday, August 11, 2016

More from BRIDGES poets . . .

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     The 2016 BRIDGES Math-Arts Conference is currently taking place at the University of Jyväskylä in Jyväskylä, Finland.  Poets on this...
1 comment:
Monday, August 8, 2016

Words -- and Meanings -- and BRIDGES, 2016

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     Tomorrow the 2016 BRIDGES Conference (which celebrates the connections between mathematics and the arts) will open at the University o...
Thursday, August 4, 2016

POETRY -- in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

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     Pomona College mathematician Gizem Karaali, one of the editors of the online Journal of Humanistic Mathematics , is also a poet .  And ...
Sunday, July 31, 2016

Loving the difference quotient ... and more ...

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     From Philadelphia poet-mathematician, Marion Cohen , a new collection  -- Closer to Dying (Word Tech, 2016).  When I received the book...
Monday, July 25, 2016

Homage to Godel

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From Erica Jolly , an Australian poet and online friend, I have learned of a fine anthology of science poems --  A Quark for Mister Mark:  1...
3 comments:
Thursday, July 21, 2016

One thing leads to another -- "Do the Math"

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     I offer poetry workshops for Peer Wellness and Recovery Services -- and PWRS coordinator Miriam Yarmolinsky invited me to go with her ...
Tuesday, July 19, 2016

A number tells the story -- in these Haiku

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     One of my neighbors, Carol, has been cleaning out bookshelves and offered me her old copy of Gary Snyder's collection,  The Back Co...
2 comments: