Wednesday, December 30, 2020

The Doomsday Rule

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     My recently posted mention of Tristian Bangert's poem about John Horton Conway (1937-2020) sent me looking through my files for m...
Monday, December 28, 2020

Geometry Personalities

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  When a triangle talks to a square, what does she say? Among my favorites of mathy poems are poems by Guillevic (1907-1997) -- in which ...
Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Counting Syllables for Christmas

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     As I look ahead toward Christmas, I shape my thoughts into words with syllable-counts that match the Fibonacci numbers. Holiday musing ...
Monday, December 21, 2020

Admiring John Conway with stories of numbers

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     Recently I was contacted by Thomas Barr, Director of Programs at the American Mathematical Society who told me of poetry written by a ...
Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Proofs in Poems -- the Sylow Theorems

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     One of my valuable resources during this year 2020 has been the AMS PAGE A DAY CALENDAR by Evelyn Lamb -- published by the American Mat...
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Monday, December 14, 2020

Solving problems -- crimes and mathematics

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     In childhood I loved novels that featured the girl-detective, Nancy Drew, and in adulthood I have continued to enjoy crime-solving fict...
Thursday, December 10, 2020

How should a professor groom for math class?

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     One of the rewards of many new endeavors is making new friends -- and one of the special connections I have made through math-poetry en...
Monday, December 7, 2020

Gatherings of a retired teacher . . .

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David Pleacher is a retired mathematics teacher who has maintained a math page on the Internet since 1998 -- and one of his rich and varied...
Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Celebrate Math Women . . . Write about them!!

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     This message is a follow-up to a posting made on October 12 -- an announcement of the Student Essay Contest sponsored by the Associat...
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      ...