What does MEAN mean?

Visual poetry by Mathemusician Larry Lesser:

These diagrams are part of a paper by L.M. Lesser found here.

A proof in limericks

     The word "transcendental" is an adjective that refers to an abstract or supernatural noun.  In mathematics, the term's meaning is specified more precisely -- a transcendental number is one that cannot be a root of any algebraic equation with rational numbers as coefficients. The number π (ratio of the length of the circumference of a circle to its diameter) and the number e (base for the system of natural logarithms) are the best known examples of transcendental numbers.
     Retired Arkansas law professor (and former math teacher) Robert Laurence has fun with this pair of transcendentals using limerick stanzas.  Get out your pencil and graph paper -- and enjoy puzzling through his rhymes.

A Transcendental Proof in Six Stanzas     

by Robert Laurence   © 2018

       They are transcendent you see:

       e^π and π^e.

       The prize you’ll win when,

       With pencil or pen,

       You prove which is smaller to me. 

Waking -- to mathematics, to poetry

Bridges-Math-Arts-Conferences --   Places to make connections!
Yesterday I posted a bit of information about POETRY at the 2018 Bridges Conference.
At the 2017 conference in Waterloo, Canada -- via a dramatic presentation -- I met Peter Taylor 
and some of his math-poetry ideas are featured below.

     One of my high school literature texts included "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) and I remember it particularly because its author was alive and its subject matter relevant to the experiences of those of us in rural Pennsylvania who were assigned to read it.  Not all of Roethke's poems are favorites -- one that I have wrestled with is "The Waking" -- which I recently found in a lecture entitled "Mathematics and Poetry," -- prepared and delivered by Professor Peter Taylor of Queens University (and available here).  In that lecture, Taylor's remarks range widely.  For example, he considers the equation

2⁴ = 4²

and suggests it as a poem.
     Both mathematics and poetry challenge us with difficult ideas -- and Taylor wonders if we might see more similarity between the two if we did not place higher economic value on mathematics.
     Roethke's poem, "The Waking," is a villanelle -- a poem of 19 lines with two lines repeated four times, each time in a new context -- and this structure helps create the vivid feeling of waking to new knowing.  Taylor challenges us:  as teachers, as students -- of mathematics, of poetry -- we need to be WAKING.  Roethke's poem explores the complexity of that process.   

BRIDGES, 2018 -- math-art-poetry -- in Stockholm

       During each summer since 1998, mathematicians and visual artists, poets and musicians, have gotten together at a BRIDGES conference to celebrate the overlapping connections of their arts.  This years conference, BRIDGES 2018, will be held July 25-59 in Stockholm.  As she has done in several previous years, mathematician-poet Sarah Glaz has organized a poetry reading as part of that event; this link leads to information about the participating poets.  Available for purchase, a poetry anthology with work from past and present Bridges poets.  The small poem offered below is one that is featured in the anthology.

          Good Fortune       by JoAnne Growney

          is good numbers—
          the length of a furrow,
          the count of years,
          the depth of a broken heart,
          the cost of camouflage, 
          the volume of tears.

     "Good Fortune" also is found in my collection, Red Has No Reason (Plain View Press, 2010).

Reaching out . . .

Consider the geometry and community of  trees .  Can we learn from them?

          We plant two trees.

          Their trunks grow strong
          and straight--and parallel.
          Parallel lines don't meet.

          These trees, however--
          straight and tall and parallel--
          reach out with branches.

Visual, Poetical -- Mathematical Impressions

Art / Visual poetry      by Anatolii T Fomenko 

Statistical fantasy . .. imagining our random world . . .

     The art by Fomenko shown above conveys multiple meanings and thus is a good fit with both mathematics and poetry.  It invites contemplation -- give it some of your time! 

Our place in the universe . . .

     Nanao Sakaki  (1923-2009) was a Japanese poet who began to wander the world after his term in the Japanese military in WWII -- and his poems give views of these travel experiences. He met Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg in the 1960s and his work has been noticeably influenced by theirs.  Here, from his collection Break the Mirror (Blackberry Books, 1996) is "A Love Letter" -- a poem that considers how the universe spreads out around us.

       A Love Letter      by Nanao Sakaki

       Within a circle of one meter
       You sit, pray and sing.

       Within a shelter ten meters large
       You sleep well, rain sounds a lullaby.

       Within a field a hundred meters large
       Grow rice and raise goats.       

Choose the right LINE

     Recently, looking through my copies of POETRY Magazine, in the September 2008 issue I found this quote (used as an epigraph) from a poet whose work I greatly admire, British poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985):

The whole point of drawing is choosing the right line.

Finding the Larkin quote led me to look back in my blog for poems that feature the concept of line  -- with its multiple meanings -- and I offer this link to search-results that offer a variety of choices for poems with line for you to explore.

And here are links to a couple of my own recent attempts to choose the right line:

    The online journal TalkingWriting has recently interviewed me

 and a link to their ten-minute video is available here.    In it I read  

a portion of my poem, "My Dance is Mathematics,"  

that stars mathematician Emmy Noether.  

Also, this recent article in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, 

"They Say She Was Good -- for a Woman,"  features that same poem 

and some additional reflections on the struggles of women in mathematics.

NOTHING is SOMETHING

Thinking today about ZERO -- zero tolerance, zero fear!

     In recent days, there's been widespread reporting of results of a study done by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concerning the large number of instances of sexual harassment in scientific professions, the most common type being   "degrading jokes and comments that made women feel excluded."
     These findings take me back to the 1980's and "affirmative action" at Pennsylvania's Bloomsburg University (where I was a member of the Mathematics Department).  The University had an Affirmative Action Officer who worked to help faculty and staff develop behaviors and policies that endeavored to end discrimination against women and minorities.  One important test of the appropriateness of an activity was a "symmetry test" -- if a remark or act did not seem proper when the roles of two participants were reversed, then the original was probably something to avoid. In those days, my male colleagues needed to reconsider some of their behaviors and I needed to overcome my fear of speaking up.
      The concept of  zero as "something" that signifies "nothing" is an ever-thought-provoking one.  In support of ZERO TOLERANCE -- with a goal of NOTHING, I offer the following poem, "The Zero," by Israel Har.   

Use MUSIC to enrich STEM teaching

     Last year this blog announced an online conference involving the use of song in teaching STEM subjects.  From one of the organizers, Gregory Crowther, I have this update -- announcing a second annual VOICES conference in September 2018:

       The first all-online VOICES conference 

       featured 40 presentations on teaching STEM subjects with music. 

       Presentation ideas are now being solicited for the 2018 conference

                     to be held on 26 September 2018.   All are welcome to enter!"

     Song lyrics often are poetry; here are links to several lyrics featured earlier in this blog:  "The Derivative Song" by Tom Lehrer,  Lines from "Mandlebrot Set" by Jonathan Coulton,  "Circle Song" and lines from "Hotel Infinity"  by Larry Lesser,  "Questions You Can't Ever Decide" by Bill Calhoun.  

More people are reading poetry!!

     In an email today from Poets.org, I received a link to an article describing increases in the numbers of readers of poetry in recent years (comparing 2017 with 2012).  The article, published by the National Endowment for the Arts, is available here.   Although that article does not mention or credit the STEM to STEAM movement, I'd like to think it may be a factor in enlarging poetry's readership.  

A visual poem

     One of the delights of today's Internet is that it enables us to find friends with common interests all over the world.  An email message from Tope Salaudeen-Adegoke of Nigeria has introduced me to one of his visual poems:
               "Coding Colonisation" is a visual poem written and arranged
               in the computer programming indentation of HTML/CSS. 
               The poem fuses what seem to be mathematics and poetry together . . ."
I have included this poem below; for those who wish background information, some explanation is given in this linked essay.  Please take time to explore the meanings coded here.

_______________    

      /*Coding Colonisation */       by Tope Saludeen-Adegoke

       #menu nativity {
                           africa-america-type:none;
                           margin:0px;
                           background-color:#000000;
       }    

Nature's Examples of Fibonacci Numbers

     Recently I have been reexamining some of the treasures that have been on my bookshelves for a while.  One of these is Discovering Patterns in Mathematics and Poetry by Marcia Birken and Anne C. Coon (Rodopi B. V., 2008).  And, on page 60 of that collection,  I find "Fibonacci Time Lines" by Kansas poet Michael L.Johnson --  the poem is a lovely weave of the Fibonacci numbers with objects they count  (and was originally published in The Unicorn Captured (Cottonwood Review Press, 1980)) and, with the poet's permission, is offered below.

     Fibonacci Time Lines    by Michael Johnson

     cat's
     claw's
     curl, pine
     cone's swirl, goat's
     horn's turn, nautilus'
     shell's homing out, pineapple's whorl,
     sneezewort's branchings, hair's twist, parrot's beak's growth, 
            elephant's
     tusk's curve, monkey's tail's spiral, cochlea's whirl of sound, 
           Vitruvius' analogies, 
     Parthenon's geometry, logarithms' golden sections, time's way 
            through form, mind's acceleration on its helical vector 
            to death . . .

Here is a link to a host of poems linked to the Fibonacci numbers and found in earlier postings in this blog.

A self, divided

     On this very humid summer morning it is a treat to be drawn by Virginia poet Joan Mazza's poem to the chill of a winter morning as the poet divides her energies, measuring her world using fractions.  

Fractions             by Joan Mazza

Half awake at 5 AM, I leave my half of a warm bed
and quilts to the dog, hold the banister to descend
the narrow stairs. The woodstove’s still warm,
only one-tenth the coals aglow under their blanket
of gray ashes. I’ve half a mind to let it be, use electric,
only a quarter more cost than wood. No labor.
Clean heat, with some say one hundredth
the pollution I contribute with my stove.   

Celebrating with a Fib

This
Fib
is to
celebrate
all those people who
connect poetry and math -- CHEERS!

For more about Fibs, do a SEARCH of this blog -- or, for one rich source, go here.

Time comes quantized . . .

     Earlier this month, I saw a poem ("Time/text") by wonderful Canadian poet and friend Alice Major on Facebook and she has given me permission to offer it here.  It is from her first book of poetry, Time Travels Light, (Rowan Books, 1992).

Time/text     by Alice Major

Time comes quantized
in little books     pocked
with fifteen-minute intervals
that mark my progress
through the day —

          Niggling book of kells
      spelling out the duties
  and services
         peculiar to each hour.