Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Calculating Pi -- a poet's view

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     Initially I was drawn to a reading at The Writer's Center in Bethesda a couple of weeks ago because my neighbor, non-fiction write...
Monday, November 27, 2017

Science Poetry from Spain

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     Several weeks ago I got an email from science journalist Elena Soto , from Palma de Mallorca, Spain, director of a weekly science suppl...
Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Burma Shave Mathematics

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     One of the positive aspects of many math journals is that they are not shy about including poems that related to mathematics -- a negat...
2 comments:
Monday, November 20, 2017

What is THE GREATEST EQUATION?

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     Sometimes a poem comes to me with a story -- and such is the case with the poem by Richard Harrison that I offer below.  As part of my ...
Thursday, November 16, 2017

Memorization and formulae

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    A website I enjoy visiting is Ben Orlin's   MathWithBadDrawings.com .  At every mathy website I visit,  it is my habit to do a searc...
Monday, November 13, 2017

Logic and Poetry -- from Lewis Carroll

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     Australian poet Erica Jolly  has alerted me to Lapham's Quarterly  -- a magazine, both print and digital, that offers the view that...
Thursday, November 9, 2017

Stop saying GIRLS can't do MATH

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     Found at Poets.org , this poem by Brenda Cárdenas that, like too many others portrays a girl in a can't do-math situation.  Anothe...
2 comments:
Monday, November 6, 2017

Mathematics -- vital imagery in SO MANY poems . . .

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     Mathematics not only governs the structure of many poems -- of sonnets and pantoums and villanelles and more -- but mathematical imager...
Friday, November 3, 2017

Probability and astonishment

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     A small poem by Lia Purpura in the January 29, 2015 issue of The New Yorker delights even as it highlights the errors that many of us...
Monday, October 30, 2017

Churchill -- Love and Information

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     On a recent Thursday evening at the Forum Theatre in downtown Silver Spring I had the exciting privilege of seeing a splendid staging o...
Friday, October 27, 2017

Moving from STEM to STEAM in Australia

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     "Poets," said Australian writer and teacher Erica Jolly , "find their themes in what matters to them."  This quote ...
Wednesday, October 25, 2017

November 1 deadline for Math Haiku

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     The Journal of Humanistic Mathematics has issued a call for Mathematical Haiku -- follow this link for the guidelines and instructions...
2 comments:
Tuesday, October 24, 2017

The Eyes of Isaac Newton . . . and so on

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     A couple of weeks ago, Irish poet-physicist Iggy McGovern read here in the DC area and introduced readers to his new poetry collection...
Friday, October 20, 2017

Perfectly Matched -- Poetry and Mathematics

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     Mathematician Sarah Glaz has recently published a lovely and varied collection of math-linked poetry -- choosing her title, "Ode ...
1 comment:
Tuesday, October 17, 2017

The best words in the best order . . .

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     Perhaps the way to link this couplet by Richard Wilbur (1921-2017) to mathematics is by referring to the notion of subset .   Wilbur i...
Friday, October 13, 2017

Mathy Double Dactyls

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     The double dactyl is, like the limerick, a fixed verse form -- and one that is often humorous. From Wikipedia's, we have this ini...
Friday, September 29, 2017

Poetry . . . Mathematics . . . and Attitude

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            Outwitted      by Edwin Markham (1852-1940)             HE DREW a circle that shut me out—             Heretic, rebel, a thi...
Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Alice's Adventures in Numberland

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     Recently I was alerted to some postings by Alice Silverberg -- she is a professor of mathematics and computer science at the Universit...
Monday, September 25, 2017

Chinese Poem of the Cross

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     At the website Aleteia.org (a Catholic social networking site that offers information that it deems pertinent to questions about faith...
Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Women Count

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     Today's commentary by Washington Post writer Dana Milbank offered a forceful reminder that women are often talked-over by men.   M...
Monday, September 18, 2017

Irish poet McGovern to visit US

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     Irish poet and physicist Iggy McGovern will visit the US in October and is scheduled to read at  The Writer's Center in Bethesd...
Friday, September 15, 2017

Love Triangle . . ..

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      One day, looking online for Edwin Abbott's 19th century classic, Flatland , I found not only Abbott's tale but some poetry.  A...
Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Truth in a circle . . .

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     In these days when the truth-value of so much of what I hear broadcast is difficult to assess I have been drawn back to a poem by Emily...
Monday, September 11, 2017

Poetry of Colors and Geometry

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      Recently I found online links to an exhibit by Japanese Surrealist Poet Kitasono Katue at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and f...
Thursday, September 7, 2017

Halfway down . . .

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     This week I have been sifting through piles of poems I have collected for possible posting herein.  Poems which I need to read and rere...
Tuesday, September 5, 2017

From Hydrology to Poetry to Infinity . . .

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     Carlos Puente is a professor of hydrology at the University of California, Davis AND he is so much more . . .  a...
Friday, September 1, 2017

Celebrate Kim Roberts with "Six"

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     Today is the first of a new month and, as expected, this morning I got an email reminder of the monthly Poetry News that is available ...
Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Pure as a mathematical equation

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     I am pleased when I see mathematics held up as an ideal -- and such was the case when I opened my June 19, 2017 issue of The New Yorker...
Monday, August 28, 2017

How does the Triangle relate to the Circle?

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     One of the active promoters of poetry with links to mathematics is Californian Carol Dorf -- who teaches math at Berkeley High School A...
Tuesday, August 22, 2017

More solar numbers

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     Yesterday's eclipse is still on my mind -- and "solar" links me to a poem featured at the recent Bridges Math-Arts Confe...
Monday, August 21, 2017

The Sun's poem is infinite . . .

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      On this day during which many in the US experienced the totality of a solar eclipse, I stayed in Maryland and, on the roof of my condo...
Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Seeking an EQUATION for LOVE . . .

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       One of the interesting and fun people I had the good fortune to meet at the 2017 Bridges Math-Arts Conference in Waterloo, Ontario, ...
8 comments:
Monday, August 14, 2017

The wisdom of grooks . . .

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     From Wikpedia , we have this definition:       A grook ("gruk" in Danish) is a form of short aphoristic poem or rhyming aph...
Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Counting, women, loving mathematics

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     Here is another Cento from BRIDGES -- for background information, please see my August 4 posting -- this one composed by Erinn and Cat...
Friday, August 4, 2017

Centos from 2017 Bridges Math-Arts Conference

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     Last Monday evening I returned home from the 2017 Bridges Math-and-the-Arts Conference at the University of Waterloo.  One of the spec...
2 comments:
Tuesday, July 25, 2017

from "The Half-Finished Heaven"

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     In 2011, Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer (1931-2015) won the Nobel Prize and this year Graywolf Press has issued a wonderful collection...
Monday, July 17, 2017

A CENTO from BRIDGES 2017 Poets

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     A cento is a literary work made from quotations from other works -- most often it is a poem, assembled from lines by other poets.    Be...
2 comments:
Sunday, July 16, 2017

Too soon -- Maryam Mirzakhani taken by cancer

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     The brilliant and celebrated mathematician -- and 2014 Fields Medal Winner -- Maryam Mirzakhani has, on July 14 at age 40, died after ...
Wednesday, July 12, 2017

They Say She Was Good -- for a Woman

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      Regulars to this blog know of my appreciation and support for the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics -- an online journal that publish...
Sunday, July 9, 2017

Three Odd Words

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     I love the mental jolt I get when a math word is used with a non-math meaning -- suddenly some playful back-and-forth happens in my hea...
Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Finding poems in Maria Mitchell's words

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SO MANY words and phrases are poetic that are NOT YET called poems. A recent Facebook posting for the Max Planck Society featured th...
Thursday, June 29, 2017

The NUMBERS that help us REMEMBER . . .

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     Born in Lithuania, poet Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004) became fluent in Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, English and French.  He emigrated to ...
Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Chains of Reasoning

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     In a recent conversation about mathematics, one of us said, "Mathematics is not about what is true, or cannot be, but is a collect...