Rhymes Help Us Remember

     In a few days I will be going on a vacation with family -- enjoying time with my children and grandchildren.  As I think back to past times together, I remember querying my grandkids about their math interests and suggesting the invention of a mathy rhyme.  I find rhyming statements easier to remember than non-rhyming ones -- and my grandchildren enjoyed discovering and inventing and repeating rhymes -- sometimes brilliant and sometimes silly.

     One of my longest-known and all-time favorite mathy rhymes is this one that tells the days of the month; below is a version of this memory-aid, found online here at Math is Fun.  

A Nickel, a Dime, a Dollar . . .

    In childhood -- and later also -- rhymes help us to remember.  I recall reciting, in early years. "Pme, two, buckle my shoe; three, four, shut the door . . ."  Here -- at the website, Empowered Parents -- are a number of counting songs and rhymes.

    Recently I found among the poems of one of my favorite poets -- Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes (1902-1967) -- a delightful counting poem entitled "Brass Spittoons."  Here are some of its lines:

A FIRST-LOVE in math-poetry -- "Counting Rhymes"

     Still in my head are counting rhymes that I learned in childhood -- an early connection between mathematics and poetry that I think helped me to love both subjects.  Here is a link to a list of more than forty math-rhymes -- and including one that is also in Spanish.
     This rhyme is one that has been useful to me throughout both childhood and adulthood-- as I strive to remember which months have thirty days.

          Thirty days hath September,
          April, June, and November;
          All the rest have thirty-one,
          Excepting February alone,
          Which has twenty-eight in line,
          Till leap-year gives it twenty-nine.

AND, today's issue of the Washington Post has a cartoon by Tom Toles -- about recounting votes after last week's election -- that also involves a counting rhyme:  I offer part of the rhyme below but the visual is critical -- and available here.

          One, two, none for you.
          Three, four, they fell on the floor.
          Five, six, it takes some tricks . . .
          Seven, eight, to make America great.
               . . .
For a few more rhymes, check out this 2013 post, "Nursery Rhyme Mathematics."

Mathy Rhymes

     Yesterday's note on "A Mathematical Morsel Every Day" -- an American Mathematical Society page-a-day calendar for 2020 assembled by mathematician and writer Evelyn Lamb -- is a fact that involves the first six digits in the decimal expansion of  π :    314159 is a prime number.

And, because this is a math-poetry blog, I have turned this information into a syllable-square rhyme:

           3     1     4

           1     5     9

           is a prime!

Perhaps you'd like to explore more:    Here's a link to previous blog postings with ideas by Evelyn Lamb.    Rhymes often help us to remember; here is a link to postings of rhymes used to remember the digits of π.    AND here is a link to some postings that feature square stanzas.

Finding a square root

Here is an old poem (1849) by George Van Waters that offers instruction on finding a square root. This process was part of my junior high learning at the Keith School in Indiana, PA lots of years ago but I suppose the algorithm is seldom taught in 21st century classrooms.  (In case the poem's directions are unclear, additional instruction is offered here.)

Rhyme, beauty, and usefulness

     For many years poetry was transmitted orally and rhymes were vital because they are easily remembered.  In recent years, however, free verse and concrete/visual poems have become vital parts of what we think of as poetry.  Rhyme lost importance when printed poetry became readily available and memory was no longer needed to keep a poem available.  Now, in the 21st century, electronic devices make visual poetry also readily accessible (see, for example, UbuWeb) and poems may also be animated and interactive.

Discovery Tool -- Following a Pattern

     When I pick up a pen to write on a particular subject, often it is useful me to try to follow a pattern for rhymes or syllable-counts -- for the effort to conform to a pattern challenges me to think about my topic in new ways.  In the history of poetry, rhyme-choices were frequent--yielding sonnets, villanelles and a variety of other forms.  

     In recent years, online and printed versions of poems have become very accessible and the principle, "Rhymes help us remember" has become less of a focus in poetry.  One of the popular connections between math and poetry has been the use of Fibonacci numbers to choose syllable counts;  especially  popular has been the FIB, a six-line stanza in which the syllable-counts are 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8 -- the first six Fibonacci numbers.  (Inventor of the FIB was Greg Pincus, and lots of information is provided here in this 2010 blog posting, Poems with Fibonacci number patterns.)  

After Waking, Running

     Today's posting is a villanelle about running -- and it is was written as a response to Theodore Roethke's villanelle, "The Waking" -- posted a few days ago on July 3.  Moving quickly has been a part of my mental life (as I dart from rhymes to equations, looking for connections) and my physical life (as I try to burn enough energy that I may sit thoughtfully for a while).  Runners are among those I admire; my heroes include  Flo-Jo -- Florence Delores Griffith-Joyner (1959-98), whose 1988 records still stand, making her "the fastest woman in the world" -- and Sir Roger Gilbert Bannister (1929-2018) -- whom I remember from a lunchtime news broadcast in 1954 when I was a girl on a farm in Pennsylvania and he ran the first sub-4 minute mile in Oxford, England.
     A villanelle has a rather complex structure -- stated somewhat simply, it is a nineteen-line poem with two rhymes in its five stanzas and two lines that each are repeated (precisely or approximately) four times.  These repetitions can lead to an interesting back-and-forth in the development of images and ideas. Although not about mathematics, this villanelle may, it seems to me, say a bit about mathematicians.

    Running

          Response (by JoAnne Growney) to “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke 

       My sleep is brief.  I rise to run again,
       to flee the doubts that catch me when I'm still.
       I live by going faster than I can.

Rhymes help to remember the digits of Pi

Calculated at the website, WolframAlpha, here are the first fifty-nine digits of the irrational number π (ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter):

     π = 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749...

Before computers became available  to calculate π to lots of decimal places in an instant, people who did scientific calculations could keep the number easily available by memorizing some of the digits.  The website fun-with-words offers several mnemonics for  π , the most common type being a word-length mnemonic in which the number of letters in each word corresponds to a digit. For example the sentence, "How I wish I could calculate pi," gives us the first seven digits.

Burma Shave Mathematics

     One of the positive aspects of many math journals is that they are not shy about including poems that related to mathematics -- a negative aspect of that practice is that the poems are not included in the Contents listing for that publication.  And so, the fact that my poem "A Mathematician's Nightmare" appears on page 31 of the February 2001 issue of Math Horizons is lost to all but those of us who have a copy of that magazine.  Also unrecorded in these Contents is a page-full of rhymes written in response to a contest that asked for math poems composed in the style of road-side advertising for Burma Shave.  From the late 1920s to the early 1960s, US highway travelers encountered various series of small signs advertising the product.  I remember, as a child, attempting to guess what was coming next as our family car drove past a series of these signs.  Here are two examples (from Wikipedia):

   A shave / That's real / No cuts to heal / A soothing / Velvet after-feel / Burma Shave
   Past / Schoolhouses / Take it slow / Let the little / Shavers grow / Burma Shave  

Highlighting Poetry-Math Favorites

     Looking back over the eight years of  postings in this blog, I find several items that have stood out in their popularity.  In case you have missed any of these, I list their titles (with links) below.
          The favorite posting, by a large margin, is: 

     "Varieties of triangles -- by Guillevic" posted on October 13, 2010.

Three other postings fall into second place:
          "Mathematical Limericks" posted on March 29, 2010,   
          "Loving a mathematician (Valentine's Day and . . .)" on February 12, 2011,
          "Rhymes help to remember the digits of Pi" on September 2, 2010.
Two more-recent and popular postings are:
          "The World is Round or Flat" on January 8, 2016,
          "Celebrate Math-Women" on March 2, 2017.

The list of labels in the lower right-hand column of  the blog gives the names of numerous mathematicians and topics that are featured in the blog -- and one may click on any label to retrieve the posts.  Additionally, the blog's SEARCH feature may be used to locate postings on a particular topic of interest.

Like poetry, mathematics is beautiful

     Congratulations to Justin Southey who is completing his doctoral studies in mathematics at the University of Johannesburg under the direction of Michael Henning. Recently Justin contacted me to ask permission to include one of my poems in the introduction to his dissertation, "Domination Results:  Vertex Partitions and Edge Weight Functions."  Here is a portion of Justin's request: 

From 2010 -- titles and dates of posts

List of postings  March 23 - December 31, 2010
A scroll 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 31  The year ends -- and we go on . . .
    Dec 30  Mathematicians are NOT entitled to arrogance
    Dec 28  Teaching Numbers
    Dec 26  Where are the Women?
    Dec 21  A Square for the Season
    Dec 20  "M" is for Mathematics and . . .  

Links to Favorites

     According to Google, these posts are the top ten favorites of visitors to this blog in the six years since my first posting in March, 2010.  Perhaps you will want to visit one of them.  Or use the SEARCH box to find something favorite of your own.   I invite your comments.  Which posts do you especially like?

Varieties of triangles -- by Guillevic     Oct 13, 2010

     Loving a mathematician (Valentine's Day and .. .)     Feb 12, 2011  

          Rhymes help to remember the digits of Pi     Sep 2, 2010

               "Mathematical" Limericks     Mar 29, 2010

                     Ray Bobo's mathematical poem Jul 14, 2010 
Poems of set paradox and spatial dimension   Feb 22, 2011
     Poems of Calculus   Apr 23, 2010

          Primes and a paradox   Aug 14, 2015
               Theorem-proof / Cut-up / poems   Nov 11, 2010
                     A Fractal Poem   Dec 28, 2014 

Favorite -- most visited -- Posts

Because this blog has more than a thousand posts, spread over more than eleven years of posting, finding best information can be challenging.  The SEARCH feature in the right-hand column) and this linked file of names of poets and math-people and blog-content topics can be useful.  And, when time permits, browsing offers lots of fun.  Here, for the curious are the TOP TEN postings -- that is the postings that have had the most visitors since the blog's beginning in March, 2010.    

ENJOY!

These are titles and links to the ten posts most visited in this blog since its beginning in 2010.

from September 2, 2010    Rhymes help to remember the digits of Pi   

from October 13, 2010   Varieties of Triangles -- by Guillevic

from March 29, 2010    "Mathematical" Limericks   

from February 11, 2011   Loving a mathematician (Valentine's Day and . . . )

from September 29, 2017   Poetry . . . Mathematics . . .  and Attitude  

from February 18, 2011   Srinivasa Ramanujan    

from January 8, 2016   The world is round . . . or flat!

from February 22, 2011    Poems of set paradox and spatial dimension

from  June 22, 2021    Interpreting Khayyam -- in Rhyme

from April 19, 2010      Poems with Fibonacci number patterns

 

Upcoming AMS Math-Poetry Contest

 Middle School Students

High School Students

College Students

Share YOUR POEMS via the 2024 Math-Poetry Contest

sponsored by the American Mathematical Society

Submit between November 27, 2023 and February 1, 2024

Detailed instructions for contest entries are found AT THIS LINK!  

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 

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 

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  

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!