Week Seven: Mathematics & poetry and novels

Activity
The 5 poets that I chose were: Cindy Lawrence,Tom Petsinis, Lisa Lajeunesse, Robin Chapman, and Susana Sulic.

There was an interesting variety and two of the three types of mathematical writing that were described in the introduction were represented. None of the poems I read or listened to seemed to be about mathematical concepts or mathematicians. My parents always give us "kids" books for Christmas and many of them would fall under this first category. The idea of a visual poem was thought provoking. I'm not entirely sure if I "got" Sulic's Spatial Contamination, but I thought Naylor's Entirely Nothing was quite fun. I wonder if he entirely reverse engineered it or played with the words in the middle "frames".

The poems of Lajeunesse, Chapman, and Petsinis alluded to mathematial concepts, but in a way that was more imaginative than informative. I laughed while reading The Travelling Salesman Problem is NP Difficult by Chapman. My friend is a computer programmer and we once had a conversation about the complexities of timetabling and the potential for AI to help. I also particularly enjoyed Dear Linear Algebra Student by Lajeunesse and could clearly recall my first experience with Linear Algebra after three years of Calculus courses! The instructor's teaching methods certainly didn't help. I will forever remember him reading a textbook page that had been photographed, uploaded to his computer, opened in windows picture and fax viewer, then projected on to the classroom wall, all the while pointing at each word he read with an extended TV antenna..  It was all a bit of a muddle until my physics classes when we actually used vectors, dot products, cross products, projections, eigenvalues for wavefunctions... Context and application shed a little light on the murky situation.  

Returning to the matter at hand, I was intrigued by the interplay between freedom and constraints in fib and PH4 poems. Lawrence used the number of syllables for her Fibonacci sequence while others had used the number of words, and PH4 poems can use words or short phrases. The use of alternate spelling and punctuation to change or enhance meaning in the PH4 poems is also an example of artistic liberty.

The choice of punctuation reminded of a poster in a colleague's classroom and inspired my first PH4 poem.

The Oxford Comma

eats shoots and leaves
shoots, eats leaves and?
shoots leaves, eats, and?
leaves shoots and eats?
leaves and shoots eats
and leaves eats, shoots
and eats leaves’ shoots
eats and shoots leaves
eats, shoots, and leaves

 

My second poem is inspired by the feeling of an egg-head after scrambling.

The masterminds?

masters students’ lost minds
student’s masters’ minds lost!
students’ minds, masters lost
minds students, lost masters
minds lost students’ masters
lost minds masters students?
lost masters minds students
masters lost students’ minds!
masters students lost minds

Gerofsky wrote, "words that can be interpreted in multiple ways or as multiple parts of speech (for example, words that can be treated as either a noun or a verb) often yield the most interesting results" (p. 275). In my first poem "shoots" and "leaves" can be nouns or verbs, and "eats" could also be interpreted as a colloquialism for food. In the second poem "minds" and "masters" can be nouns or verbs. Both of these, and also "students", can be interpreted as plural, possessive, or plural possessive which adds some extra punctuation fun.

She also writes "there are 4! or 24 possible permutations" and "the PH4 selects a third of the all the possible permutations ... dependent upon initial row order" (p. 274). Thinking about factorials, I wonder about using this type of poem to look at permutations and combinations in a probability unit. Or possibly as a problem-solving activity where students choose four words then figure out the ideal starting combination to have the highest number of sensical phrases. Or even as an exercise in mathematical argumentation. For any 8 randomly selected possibilities, is there guaranteed to be a starting combination that would include all 8? Why or why not?

Reflection
de Adana, F. S. (2018). Surfing the mobius band: An example of the union of art and mathematics [Paper]. Bridges 2018 Conference Proceedings, Stockholm, Sweden.https://archive.bridgesmathart.org/2018/bridges2018-423.pdf

This article considers the intersection of mathematics and art in popular culture using the example of mobius bands in comics such as the Silver Surfer. As with many of the poems we read this week, the mobius band tends to be treated metaphorically in popular culture, often representing the idea of an endless and inescapable cycle. The authors acknowledge that the exact nature of the mobius band is not, and cannot, be fully represented in graphic narratives. Instead, the combination of mathematics and popular culture inspires "the collective imagination" (p. 426) and makes a mathematical idea more interesting and accessible.

The authors use the mobius band as "an example of how mathematics can be part of an artistic narrative" (p. 423) combining story with geometry. It reminded me of previous conversations and course work on the use of story in mathematics teaching. Not my area of strength! I wonder if the added visual elements make it easier to combine math and story, or not. In this case, the mobius band itself captures interest by defying expectations and the geometry is more easily appreciated when it can be seen. It is like the geometry version of a discrepant event in science. Or one of those "tricks" involving a bunch of algebra that essentially "undoes" itself or sneakily divides by zero. But what other concepts might work well with graphic narratives? Could similar cyclical metaphors work with fractals or sinusoidal functions? What other concepts or objects defy expectations or capture attention? Maybe geometric optical illusions?