Looking back . . . to previous posts . . .

  BROWSE and ENJOY!

Back in January 2020 I gathered a list of titles of previous posts and posted it here at this link.  And below I offer titles of postings -- with links -- since that time.

And, if you are looking for a post on a particular topic,
you are invited to explore the SEARCH feature in the right-hand column
OR to browse the list of  Labels (also to the right) -- and click on ones that interest you.

 

TITLES OF POSTS (with links) 

June, 2021    

      Math Communication with Poetry -- Strogatz Prize

      One More Love Poem

      Interpreting Khayyam -- in Rhyme   

      Putting CALCULUS into a poem . . .  

      Images of a Complex World   

      Encryption and Love   

      Every Seventeen Years . . .   

      A Life Made to Count   

      A Few Lines of Parody   

      Euclid and Barbie -- and attitudes toward math . . .

 

May, 2021      

      A Mathy Rhyme from Twitter   

      A Rhymer and an Analyst -- a Friendship   

      What does CANCEL mean? -- some poetic wordplay!   

      MoMath Celebrates Limericks!  

      Reflecting on Pi . . .   

      Keeping Track of Chairs   

      Mathematical Forms in Poetry . . .  

      Mathy Jokes    

      Climate Concerns   

      Celebrate Math-Women -- Celebrate AWM  

Celebrate Pi-Day

 3 . 1 4 1 5 9 2 6 5 3  .  .  . 

March 14  -- that is, Pi-Day -- will soon be here.  One of the ways of celebrating  π  is with dessert pastries (pies)  -- but a  π-day  greeting often takes on the challenge of a message in Pilish -- a language whose word-lengths follow the digits of  π -- a challenge that students often enjoy!   An example:

Hug a tree, I shout -- hungering to defend trees and  . . .

Pi-ku Contest in Australia -- deadline Two Pi Day

     Using syllable counts to help to craft poems has been with us since the sonnet and this blog has often presented square poems and Fibs and Pilish and . ..  and today we again focus on the digits of  π.  On Pi-Day (3/14) Australia's Cosmos Magazine opened a Pi-Ku Contest which asks for brief Haiku-like poems whose syllables-per-line are counted by the first six digit of the decimal value of  π.  (Contest information is available at this link.)  Entries must be submitted by 2Pi-Day, or 6/28.

     Here are two mathy samples from the Cosmos contest-information site:  

        Learning STEM
        is
        necessary.
        Do
        remember science,
        technology, engineering, maths.     by Jennifer Chalmers

        To say safe,
        Keep
        an area
        of
        Pi times one point five
        metres squared around yourself always.       by Lauren Fuge  

Other poetry forms shaped by the digits of  π include π-ku and Pilish.

Remembering Pi-day, a day late

Yesterday (3-14) was Pi-day, but my recent thoughts have been focused on my math-teacher son Eric (who has acute pancreatitis) and his family -- and I forgot to post this poem on the proper day.  Thanks to Lana Hechtman Ayers for these opening lines of  "Circumference:  A love poem." 

Celebrate Pi-Day with a message in Pilish

      As you may already know, when we write in Pilish, our word-lengths follow the pattern of the digits of pi.  For example, here is a link to posting that offers a poem in Pilish by Mike Keith.  Here is a small Pilish verse of my own:

Twenty-six words of Pilish . . .

Here is a link to a host of earlier postings in this blog about Pi.

And, for Pi-Day or any day . . ..a book I found online recently that looks like a great STEAM resource for K-12 teachers is Strategies that Integrate the Arts in Mathematics (Shell Education, 2015) by Linda Dacey and Lisa Donovan.  This amazon.com listing enables viewers to look inside.

Poems starring mathematicians - 3

Today's poems illustrate the satirical humor and rhyme that frequently inhabit poems by mathematicians. (Previous postings of poems about mathematicians include March 23, April 14, and April 15.)

I Even Know of a Mathematician      by John L Drost

        “I even know of a mathematician who slept with his wife only
                   on prime-numbered days…” Graham said.
                            ―Paul Hoffman, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers

Loving a mathematician (Valentine's Day and . . . )

A perfect way to celebrate Valentine's Day -- especially for you who enjoy mathematics --  read (aloud and to each other) some "poems of love and mathematics." Such is easily possible, for the anthology, Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics (A K Peters, 2008), edited by Sarah Glaz and me, contains words on the topic by more than 150 poetic voices.  

Celebrate Pi -- and Poe

     Recently I came across a link I had saved to an article from last June in the Washington Post -- an article that considers Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) and the scope of his influence.  Poe's poem "Sonnet -- To Science" was posted in this blog at this link back in October, 2013 but today, as Pi-Day (3.14) approaches, I am thinking of his poem, "The Raven."  Mathematician Mike Keith has written a version of "The Raven" in Pilish, an arrangement of words whose lengths follow the digits of Pi (when the digit 0 occurs, a 10-letter-word is used);  the complete Pilish version is found at this link.   Here are its opening lines:

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716 . . . .

 My own attempts at Pilish are much more modest and today I quote from a posting in March, 2018:

     Hug a tree, I shout -- hungering to defend trees
                    and every creation . . .

     In San Francisco, the Exploratorium Museum -- which reports that it invented Pi Day to honor not only Pi but also to remember Albert Einstein's Birthday -- will celebrate the holiday with programs that feature John Sims, a mathematical artist (and also someone who has been previously noted in this blog).

MATH-GIRL gives us Pi

     Sunday, 3/14, will be Pi-day and I celebrate here with a comment in Pilish from my imagined author MATH-GIRL.  And before the poetic words let me call to attention a non-imaginary story about an amazing woman who calculated trillions of digits of pi.   Go here for an NPR story about the Guinness World Record set by Emma Haruka Iwao. 

     MATH-GIRL calculates PI

       3.    Now
       1    a
       4    girl --
       1    a
       5    suave
       9    innovator
       2    of
       6    future
       5    style
       3    and
       5    sharp
       8    numeracy --
       9    carefully
       7    fathoms
       9    diameters
       3    for
       2    us.
                 .  .  .

What are the next words that you see for MATH-GIRL? 

Here is a link to several previous Pi-Day/Pilish postings in this blog.

Looking back . . . titles, links to previous posts

      For your browsing pleasure,here are titles and links to previous blog postings.  Below are listed linked-titles of posts from 2018 and up-to now in 2019 and here is a link to a list of titles and links for posts prior to 2018.  

•       March 13   An Interview of/by a Mathy Poet
•       March 11   Celebrate Pi-Day on 3.14
•       March  6    Celebrate Math-Women with Poems!
•       March  4    Math in 17 Syllables

February 2019: 

• Solving for X, Searching for LIFE
• Stories of Black Mathematicians (event postponed)
• All Numbers are Interesting . . .
• George Washington, cherry tree, lifespan . . .
• Musical sounds of math words -- in a CENTO
• If 2017 was a poem title . . .
• Mathematics and Valentine's Day
• Speed flunking math . . . NO, NO!
• Quantum Lyrics -- Poems

Celebrate Pi

     Soon it will be Pi-Day (3.14) and this year I again call your attention to a poem by one of my long-time favorite poets -- the poem "Pi" by Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012).   I offer a portion of the poem below (followed by a link to the complete poem).

from    Pi     by Wiwlawa Szymborska  

 (translated from Polish by Clare Cavanaugh and Stanislaw Baranczak (1946-2014)).

     The admirable number pi:
     three point one four one
     All the following digits are also initial,
     five nine two because it never ends.
     It can’t be comprehended six five three five at a glance,
     eight nine by calculation,
     seven nine or imagination,
     not even three two three eight by wit, that is, by comparison
     four six to anything else
     two six four three in the world.
     The longest snake on earth call it quits at about forty feet.
     Likewise, snakes of myth and legend, though they may
                hold out a bit longer.
     The pageant of digits comprising the number pi
     doesn’t stop at the page’s edge.        . . .
               .  .  . 

The entire Szymborska-poem is may be found here at the website "Famous Poets and Poems" and also here in an online pdf of the booklet Numbers and Faces:  A Collection of Poems with Mathematical Imagery -- a collection that I edited on behalf of the Humanistic Mathematics Network.

This link connects to a list of previous blog-posts of Pi-related poems. 

How much for a digit of PI?

Scottish poet Brian McCabe writes playfully of numbers.  In the following poem he imagines an auction of the digits of π.

   Three Point One Four One Five Nine Two
   Six Five Three Five Eight Nine Seven Nine
   Three  Two Three Eight Four Six Two Six
       Four Three Three Eight Three Two
         Seven Nine Five Zero Two Eight             by Brian McCabe 

Observe Pi-Day by writing in Pilish

      Many poets use constraints to shape their writing but few are as constrained as mathematician Mike Keith who has written many works in Pilish -- that is, a language in which the flow of words have lengths that follow the digits of Pi.  In honor of 2020's Pi-Day on 3.14, I have developed a small bit of Pilish, a poem of sorts, which I offer below.

 

 Entering the term "Pilish" into this blog's SEARCH box finds these earlier postings that celebrate Pi. 

 The first 50 decimal digits are 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510 . . .

Again we celebrate Pi !

 Now I give  -- I again enumerate π's digits, count out . . . 

3.141592653 . . . 

Tuesday, March 14, is Pi-day -- and I invite you to browse or SEARCH this blog for references to π / Pi and to learn more about Pilish (a language in which, as above, word-lengths follow the pattern of the digits of π).  Here are a links to several of the postings available:

       Rhymes to help you remember the digits of Pi
       Poetry that imagines auctioning the digits of Pi
       A Circle poem in Pilish 

Inspired by Pi

     Last year, a few days after Pi-Day, my email had a link (Thanks, Paul Geiger!) to an example of Pilish -- this one a circle poem by Mike Keith that represents the initial 402 digits of Pi  -- and I have, at last, posted the poem below.  Keith's poem first appeared in the The Mathematical Intelligencer in 1986. 

     And here is a link to musical Pi --at the webpage of "The Derivatives" are math parodies written and performed by Bloomsburg University professors William Calhoun, Kevin Ferland, and Erik Wynters, including The Pi  Song (also known as 3.14159/Circle).

From 2011 -- dates, titles of posts

List of postings January 1 - December 31, 2011
Scrolling through the 12 months of titles below may lead you to topics and poets/poems of interest. Also helpful may be the SEARCH box at the top of the right-hand column; there you may enter names or terms that you would like to find herein.
Dec 30  Good Numbers
Dec 26  A mathematical woman
Dec 22  Counting on Christmas
Dec 20  Thoughts Suggested by a College Examination
Dec 17  Ruth Stone counts
Dec 14  A puzzle with a partial solution
Dec 11  Poetry captures math student
Dec  8  Monsieur Probabilty
Dec  5  Poetic Pascal Triangle
Dec  2  Mathematics works with witchcraft 

Have fun with "The Pi Song"

     Often we celebrate the number pi -- ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, an infinite non-repeating decimal that begins with 3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 . . ..  Pi is a bridge between day-to-day mathematics that nearly all of us know and mathematics that is complex and difficult. 
     My own celebration of Pi includes these earrings -- but I have friends and former colleagues in the Bloomsburg University Department of Mathematics and Digital Sciences that celebrate Pi in a far more entertaining way -- in song.  Here is a link to the YouTube version of "The Pi Song" with lyrics by Bill Calhoun and Kevin Ferland and performed by "Professor Parody (Kevin Ferland).  Performance credits are found here.  And here is a link to some more details about the song.

Here is a link to a previous posting with more mathy song lyrics by Bill Calhoun.

Tomorrow is Pi Day

     Tomorrow is Pi Day and I offer no new poems but supply links to several previous posts.  Poetry of π may be found on 23 August 2010 (an "irrational sonnet" by Jacques Bens),  6 September 2010 (featuring work by Kate Bush,  Robert Morgan and Wislawa Szymborska),  10 September 2010 (mnemonics for π, especially from Mike Keith) , 15 March, 2011,(a poem by Lana Hechtman Ayers)  27 November 2011 (a poem by Brian McCabe) and 10 March 2013 (the opening lines of a poem "3.141592 . . ." by Peter Meinke).

Celebrate Pi -- write in Pilish

On 3/14/15 many of us will celebrate  π - day; for those who like to gaze on the digits of  π,  one hundred thousand of them are available here.  In honor of this upcoming special day I have composed a small stanza in Pilish (the language whose word-lengths follow the digits of  π ). 

3.  1  4  

Get a list,

 1  5  

I shout,

   9  2  6  5  3  5

Math-Stat Awareness Month -- find a poem!

APRIL is Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month
AND
National Poetry Month!

 Celebrate with a MATHY POEM, found here in this blog!  Scroll down!

If you are looking for mathy poems on a particular topic, the SEARCH box in the right-column may help you find them. For example, here is a link to posts found when I searched using the term "parallel."  And here are posts that include the term "angle."   To find a list of additional useful search terms, scroll down the right-hand column. 

For your browsing pleasure, here are the titles and dates of previous blog postings,

moving backward from the present.  Enjoy!

Mar 31  Math and poetry in film
Mar 28  Split this Rock, Freedom Plow Award, April 21
Mar 27  Math-themed poems at Poets.org
Mar 23  Remember Emmy Noether!