Friday, November 27, 2020

November is Native American Heritage Month

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      Today, the day after Thanksgiving, is Native American Heritage Day -- a November event that was proclaimed in 2009 by President Obama...
Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Gather in Poems

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 Gather in Poems -- a sort of Thanksgiving      Last evening I attended a lovely virtual reading, "Gather in Poems," sponsored by ...
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Monday, November 23, 2020

Happy Fibonacci Day!

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        Today, November 23 is Fibonacci Day . . . How are you celebrating?  Twitter poet Brian Bilston (@Brian_Bilston) has posted a Fibo...
Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Shaping POETRY with GEOMETRY

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Syllable-count constraints help me to think carefully about word choices as I construct a poem.  Here are square and triangular stanzas that...
Monday, November 16, 2020

Poetry and Mathematics -- opening doors . . .

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Since 1998 The Bridges Organization has been offering conferences that publicize and celebrate links connecting mathematics and the arts.  ...
Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Venn Diagrams

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      During these days of classifying people and points of view, my thoughts turn again and again to Venn Diagrams and I am then reminded ...
Monday, November 9, 2020

Special Days for Mathematics

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Today is the birthday of black mathematician, astronomer, almanac-writer and puzzle-maker Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806) -- and some of his ...
Thursday, November 5, 2020

Varieties of SQUARE poems

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      When writing a poem on a topic about which I feel strongly, I often like to use constraints -- such as patterns of syllable-counts or ...
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Monday, November 2, 2020

Voting is on the calendar!

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Poetry often surprises us by using familiar words in new ways -- and such is also the case with this cryptarithmetic puzzle -- offered by Ev...
Thursday, October 29, 2020

Seeking wisdom in mathematical Haiku

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 During these difficult pre-election coronavirus days I have been turning to poetry, and especially favoring -- for their brevity -- Haiku. ...
Monday, October 26, 2020

Math Songs by Tom Lehrer -- Political, etc.

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      All of the songs of musician and math-teacher and nonagenarian Tom Lehrer are now in the public domain ( at this link ).  His mathy i...
Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Spirit of Delight . . .

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        The true spirit of delight, the exaltation,         the sense of being more than man,         which is the touchstone of the highest...
Monday, October 19, 2020

2020 Nobel Laureates -- Mathematics and Poetry

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     Both mathematics and poetry are languages for conveying complex ideas . . . for example, Oxford mathematical physicist Roger Penrose u...
Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Celebrating Ada Lovelace

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     Today, 13 October 2020, is  Ada Lovelace Day -- celebrated each year on the second Tuesday of October and an international celebration ...
Monday, October 12, 2020

Brilliant Math-Women -- Share the News!

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     Recently (10/10/2020), NPR had an interview with former teachers of Louisville shooting victim Breonna Taylor   -- an interview that ce...
Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Mathy Rhymes

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     Yesterday's note on "A Mathematical Morsel Every Day" -- an American Mathematical Society page-a-day calendar for 2020 as...
Monday, October 5, 2020

The Domain of the Function . . .

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     Recently I found, in The Literary Nest , the mathy poem, "Functional" by retired math teacher and active poet Carol Dorf .  D...
Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Poetry Enriches Science -- a growing point of view!

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     Recently I found and enjoyed the article " Scientists Take On Poetry ," an article by Katherine Wright in Physics   --  a f...
Tuesday, September 29, 2020

TalkingWriting with Mathematics

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     TalkingWriting is an online journal that's celebrating its 10th birthday -- TEN YEARS of including mathematics in its mix of poet...
Monday, September 28, 2020

Poetry-math resources -- for classrooms and for fun

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 This link leads to my article   " Enrich Discussions about Mathematics with Poems " --  an article that offers links to poems tha...
Wednesday, September 23, 2020

If a Garden of Numbers . . .

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      In a summer email from math-poet-editor Carol Dorf ,  I first enjoyed "If a Garden of Numbers" -- a mingling of numbers with...
Monday, September 21, 2020

Misunderstanding mathematicians . . .

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       One of the comments that non-maths often make when they meet a math-person is "Oh, I never was good at math."  An awkward...
Friday, September 18, 2020

What is x?

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     This thoughtful poem by versatile poet Mary Peelen appeared in the Winter, 2016 issue of The Massachusetts Review .           Variabl...
Monday, September 14, 2020

Venn Diagram Poem

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     One of my granddaughters has been working with Venn diagrams in her middle school math class.  And my thoughts turned to this poem -- ...
Wednesday, September 9, 2020

TEACHERS are important ... enlarge Hardy's view!

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     One of the classics written about mathematics is G. H. Hardy's 1940 book-essay, A Mathematician's Apology -- a treatise that ...
Monday, September 7, 2020

Poetry in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

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     The September 2020 issue of Scientific American contains a poem by British Poet Laureate Simon Armitage -- "Bring Back the Leaf...
Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Another Fibonacci poem . . .

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     Through many years of the history of poetry, the sonnet has been a treasured form -- as poets strive carefully to match the iambic pent...
Monday, August 31, 2020

Poetry on Twitter

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      Dubbed the "unofficial poet laureate of Twitter" Brian Bilston (a pen-name) sometimes uses mathematics to shape his poems; ...
Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Ten thousand parts of cat . . .

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As a cat-lover, I am drawn to David Manning's mathy poem that I offer below:          Live Round      by David T. Manning        Al...
Monday, August 24, 2020

What can we count on?

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A s the August days grow shorter in a hot summer of social distancing, here is a sample of my thoughts:           I learned to count      ...
Thursday, August 20, 2020

From an engineer who loves poetry . . .

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João Augusto Sampaio is an Environmental and Civil Engineer who loves poetry; here is a sample: by João Augusto Sampaio   Sampaio...
Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Voting and being counted . . .

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      A story in the KIDSPOST section of today's Washington Post offers a reminder that 100 years ago today -- on August 18, 1920 --  t...
Monday, August 17, 2020

Heart Arithmetic

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      During these days of protest and politics and pandemic, a diversion -- some playful thoughts about LOVE from poet Carl Sandburg (1878...
Monday, August 10, 2020

Poems can help us teach/learn mathematics . . .

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     With increasing awareness of the value of integrating the arts in science and mathematics (expanding STEM to STEAM), numerous teachers ...
Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Celebrate the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

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     Recently Vol.10, No.2 of the online Journal of Humanistic Mathematics has become available online.  This issue is a "Special Is...
Monday, August 3, 2020

Point of Inflection -- and the coronavirus

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     In the UK, the Radical Statistics Group describes itself as "using statistics to support progressive social change."  The J...
Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Census . . . correct counting is not easy. . .

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     One of the challenges of applying mathematics is doing it correctly.  Each of us has a limited view, often affected by biases such as ...