by João Augusto Sampaio
|
Thursday, August 20, 2020
From an engineer who loves poetry . . .
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
Voting and being counted . . .
A story in the KIDSPOST section of today's Washington Post offers a reminder that 100 years ago today -- on August 18, 1920 -- the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was officially ratified -- extending the right to vote to women.
Here is a link to a poem by Evie Shockley, women’s voting rights at one hundred (but who’s counting?) -- and, below, a few lines from that important poem:
* * *
one-mississippi
two-mississippis
* * *
one vote was all fannie lou
hamer wanted. in 1962, when
her constitutional right was
over forty years old, she tried
to register. all she got for her
trouble was literacy tested, poll
taxed, fired, evicted, & shot
at. a year of grassroots activism
nearly planted her mississippi
freedom democratic party
in the national convention.
* * *
For additional postings related to math and women and voting, here is a link to the results of a blog Search using the terms women and vote.
Monday, August 17, 2020
Heart Arithmetic
During these days of protest and politics and pandemic, a diversion -- some playful thoughts about LOVE from poet Carl Sandburg (1878-1967).
How Much? by Carl Sandburg
How much do you love me, a million bushels?
Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more.
And to-morrow maybe only half a bushel?
To-morrow maybe not even a half a bushel.
And is this your heart arithmetic?
This is the way the wind measures the weather.
Monday, August 10, 2020
Poems can help us teach/learn mathematics . . .
Because when you practice math a lot,
it almost always pays off.
Wednesday, August 5, 2020
Celebrate the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics
Dear Arithmetic by Mary Soon Lee
Galileo's Verse by Bruce F. McGuffin
Hexagons by Barbara Quick
Changes and Deltas by Jim Wolper
Monday, August 3, 2020
Point of Inflection -- and the coronavirus
is where towering terror of
cumulative cases
finally
slows its rise.
Wednesday, July 29, 2020
Census . . . correct counting is not easy. . .
firstborn, nay-sayers,
veterans, slow-payers,
seditionists, convicts,
half-breeds, has-beens,
the nearly defined dead,
all the disenfranchised live.
Monday, July 27, 2020
Prove it . . .
Friday, July 24, 2020
A favorite recursion . . .
memories bring back
memories bring back
memories bring back
memories bring back
memories . . .
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Finishing halfway . . .
When I’m writing a poem,
there’s less and less of it.
As I approach the mountains,
they vanish behind a gentle hill,
behind the bunny slope.
Monday, July 20, 2020
Math-Arts Connections -- links to rich reading . . .
Friday, July 17, 2020
Poetry contest winners --- π-ku
For example, Green grass and
blue
sky and sun's heat.
In π-ku
I
shrink what I think.
The numbers 3, 1, and 4 also may -- instead of counting syllables -- count words.
Today in July
sunshine
pushes the temperature skyward.
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
A thoughtful Fibonacci poem
the irrational by Roberto Christiano
irrational
numbers
c'est moi?
a number that
cannot be expressed by the
ratio of two integers / and what's an integer?
Monday, July 13, 2020
Math-Poetry for a virtual BRIDGES Conference
Wednesday, July 8, 2020
Wonderful math-poetry . . . in lots of online places
Every time, these days, it seems, an equation gets forced. . . .
At Poets.org, as at many poetry websites, there is an opportunity to search -- using, for example, "geometry" or "equation" -- and to find lots of poems with mathematical connections.
Carol Dorf is a retired math teacher and a wonderful poet; this link leads to poems from her published in this blog and this link leads to "Wild Equations," a collection of some the mathy poems found in TalkingWriting.
Monday, July 6, 2020
Life Lessons in Math and Rhyme
Friday, July 3, 2020
Independence . . .
How can it be that mathematics,
being after all a product of human thought
. . . independent of experience,
is so admirably appropriate
to the objects of reality?
Wednesday, July 1, 2020
Opening our minds to New Views . . .
From visual poet Karl Kempton (who celebrates a birthday today) I offer a visual-poetry reminder of multiple ways of viewing a situation -- illustrated by two views of dividing the number 8.
Monday, June 29, 2020
Considering opposites . . . and finding union . . .
A syllable-square poem by Carmela Martino (offered below) illustrates one of the unifications that can benefit our society: inclusion of the arts to enrich the sciences, from STEM forming STEAM.
Carmela Martino's poem first appeared here at TeachingAuthors. |
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
Math-poetry in The Mathematical Intelligencer
I'm thinking of those graphs we anxiously scan each day
carry news of infection's spread, asking if we
will find death stalking our neighborhoods . . .
Chapman's complete poem is available here.
Monday, June 22, 2020
Counting on ... and on ... BLACK LIVES MATTER!
Learning to count by Nichita Stanescu
Hairy and sweaty sit
the barbarian Hittites.
Learning to count they pull from corpses
fingers, legs, arms, eyes.
Oh, divided ones,
how bloody
is the idea of having ideas!
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
Principles of Accounting -- in verse!
Principles of Accounting by Barbara Crooker
Nearly summer, and the trees are banking on green,
calculating their bonuses in numerators of leaves.
Outside my window, the crows are ganging up
on someone, thugs in their hoodies of night.
I'm feeling the number of days begin to feel finite,
no longer uncountable as blades of grass.
Monday, June 15, 2020
Everybody counts -- Axioms for diversity
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
Unconscious(?) bias
Wherever she goes
there is mathematics --
but THEY don't call
her a mathematician . . .
SHE
is a girl
or a woman,
a teacher,
a student
or perhaps
a scholar,
maybe
an aspiring poet . . .
Monday, June 8, 2020
Learning from Copernicus
Today, read the poetic words of Paul Tran and consider these questions.
Copernicus by Paul Tran (from The New Yorker, link below)
Who doesn’t know how
doubt lifts the hem of its nightgown
to reveal another inch of thigh
before the face of faith?
I once didn’t. I once thought I was
my own geometry,
my own geocentric planet
Friday, June 5, 2020
Does nothing exist?
The empty set exists by Alexandru Ionut
To see her would be like touching death
It's axiomatic, the foundation of any metric
You love her because she's her
Double entendre across the stanza
But her hair, only spirals
My love for her, pure vector
Imaginary, hypercomplex
Unmixed evil, I bow to Lord Kelvin
Maxwell's demon, my Hamiltonian angel
Wednesday, June 3, 2020
Women in Theory -- Math to Give
I Will Survive (lyrics by Avi Wigderson (Princeton, IAS)
At first I was afraid, I was petrified
I worried I could never fit this proof on just one slide
But then I spent so many nights
thinking why it is so long
And I grew strong
And learned exactly what went wrong
A problem wor-thy, of attack
Just proves its worth by vigorously fighting back
I should have used error correction,
should have sampled yet again
I should have stayed the course
and found there is so much that I can gain
. . .
Sunday, May 31, 2020
Which permutation of lines yields the best poem?
Glock's article, "Jericho Rising," tells of various factors that have influenced Brown's poetry and describes his process of arranging lines, typed on separate strips of paper, into poems. Three of the lines shown in the article are:
What is the history of the wound?
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
THE STORY OF MATHEMATICS -- in a poem
The Story of Mathematics by Sarah Dickenson Snyder
It starts with a shell –
its curve and shine,
the way a line peaks.
It starts with a star
and the arc
between bone and light.