I told Mr. Shannon in eighth grade,
I was going to major in English
and would never use algebra after this.
But once again I’m at my poetry desk,
another word problem, solving for the unknown.
Tag mathematics
Pythagoras in Trousers
Pythagoras of Samos and of the theorem
may have been one of the first
Greeks to wear trousers instead of skirts.
A universe odd and even, cosmic opposites,
squares and triangles, structure and event.
Suggested by reading Pythagoras’s Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender War by Margaret Wertheim
Naming Infinity
Did you think “number”? It’s no number.
Without limits. That symbol – a lemniscate – mathematical
turned mystical, which is far better because
the former sounds “knowable” and we know
only that it’s not. We can’t even name it.
∞
(Inspired by Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity
Finding X
I never mastered the mathematical treasure map
of algebra and that search for X.
A mysteriously distant destination with puzzling clues
not leading me from point to point.
No dotted line. No chest of gold.
March 14
Einstein’s birthday and my oldest son’s birthday.
Ratio of circle’s circumference to its diameter.
Pi Day and this year an unusual 3.14.14.
Which means nothing mathematically special since π
is that rare worldly thing: a constant.
Spira Mirablis
A marvelous equiangular spiral. Logarithmic, yes, but
also the spiraling nautilus shell, sunflower heads,
hawk to its prey, insects to light,
arms of galaxies, nerves of the cornea,
tropical cyclones. Such growth without changing shape.
Writing the Day 