JoAnne's math poetry

Joachim Verhagen — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 20:22:00 GMT

I got the following mail today

HELLO to one of my favorite websites .. SCIENCE JOKES . . .. 
please send this info on to those who love mathematics and poetry!!!
 
A collection of my mathematical poetry has recently been published by Paper Kite Press
 and is available for e-mail order at http://www.wordpainting.com/
 
Thanks.
JoAnne Growney
 
* * * * * * * *
Greetings from JoAnne;
for poetrymath and other hybrid ventures, browse my website, http://joannegrowney.com.
Each of life's new tasks will teach you how it's done.

The latter site gives some examples of her math poems. It is more serious than what you see at my site.

pi day

Joachim Verhagen — Sun, 13 Mar 2005 17:51:00 GMT

March the 14th is pi day. If you don't know why, think of the way Americans write dates. It is certainly one of the sillier special days. If you wish to know more about it , see the following webpage the following webpage

To celebrate it here are some pi jokes:

With the method of Buffon the value of Pi can be calculated by throwing
  needles (length l) on a parquet floor with where the planks have a width
  of b.  The probability that a needle crosses two planks, with touching the
  border counting as a half needle, is 2l/(b pi)

The idea is that you use many needles of a reasonable measurement.  With a
1000 needles you will might get it to the first decimal correct (3.1).

N. Gridgeman used 2 needles with a length of 78.5398 cm and planks with a
width of 1 m. With one of the needles touching the border of a plank and
the other not he got pi = (2 * 0.785398) / ( 1 * 1/2) = 3.141592.  Not bad
at all for two needles.

--

Another method method to calculate pi, discovered by Ernestor Cesàro, is by
by using the fact that the probability that two random integers have no
common divisors is 6/pi^2.

Jiang Chuan divided the first 1250000 decimals of pi in parts of six
ciphers and and got pi=3.146634, which is correct to 2 places.

Based on Jean-Paul Delahaye, Het fascinerende getal pi,2004 (translation
of: Le fascinant nombre pi. 1997)



halloween math
Q: Wadaya get when you take the circumference of your jack-o-lantern and
    divide it by its diameter?
A: Pumpkin Pi

A shoeseller meets a mathematician and complains that he does not know what 
size shoes to buy. "No problem," says the mathematician, "there is a simple 
equation for that," and he shows him the Gaussian normal distribution. The 
shoeseller stares some time at het equation and asks, "What is that 
symbol?" "That is the Greek letter pi." "What is pi?" "That is the ratio 
between the circumference and the diameter of a circle." Upon this the 
shoeseller cries out: "What does a circle have to do with shoes?!"


         'Tis a favorite project of mine
         A new value of pi to assign.
             I would fix it at 3
             For it's simpler, you see,
         Than 3 point 1 4 1 5 9.

("The Lure of the Limerick" by W.S. Baring-Gould, p.5. Attributed to
Harvey L. Carter).


If inside a circle a line
Hits the center and goes spine to spine
And the line's length is "d"
the circumference will be
d times 3.14159


If inside a circle a line
Hits the center and goes spine to spine
And the line's length is "d"
the circumference will be
d times 3.14159


       Pi vs e
Pi goes on and on and on ...
And e is just as cursed.
I wonder: Which is larger
When their digits are reversed?


I liked the PI-ous one best.


Statement: pi * r^2
Reaction: Pie are not square.  Pie are round.  Cornbread are square.


Mathematician's Bakery:  House of Pi
As easy as 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841


The most boring book in the world is probably: J. Guilloud and M Bouyer,
1000 000 pi, commisariat à l'Énergie Atomique, 1974.
The 415 pages contain the first million decimals of pi.
In case it interests you the last 5 decimals in the book are : 58151

If you are a real pi freak (if not how is possible that you got this far? :-)), I also have some pi mnemonics.
The exploratorium site I mentioned on top has more links. I especially recommend Mike Keith's page, who makes remarkable pi mnemonics.
If you wish to know more about pi, but you are not a mathematician, I can recommend Jean-Paul Delahaye's book on pi, le fascinant nombre pi. There are also Dutch and German translations. Maybe also others, I don't know.
Joachim.

Evolution and Creation theory

Joachim Verhagen — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 17:45:00 GMT

I am a firm believer in evolution. Creation theory is based on some old books and a lot of preachers who tell people that it is God's word and therefore the truth. Not a very reliable base for a scientific theory.

Now take evolution. I have read some books about it and seen some old bones of strange animals. The books seem more convincing to me, but is that scientific? I have not carbon dated the bones nor checked the carbon dating theory. I am just a believer.

In Andre Nobes's The Big debate webpage a far future evolutionists convinces the audience that planes evolved out of car's while the creationist is laughted at as his only proof is an old Roll's Royce drivers manual. Very funny. Does it convince me? No!

Apparently, for someone who is not actually doing research in biology or getting messages from God it is just a matter of who you believe.

What do you think?
Joachim

Science

JoAnne's math poetry

pi day

Evolution and Creation theory