math poems 2

Untitled, by Sprite

Dividing is divine,

And four plus five is nine.

Adding is just fine,

Four plus five is nine.

Negative and positive are always great.

But four plus six is is not eight.
Metric System Limerick, by Jimmie

Sprite was a girl quite content

to use metric measurement.

Celcius, liters,

kilograms, meters,

She used them a hundred percent.
Living Math Limerick, by Jimmie

I once thought that math was a bore;

Arithmetic gross to the core.

My textbook I tossed;

To tests said, “Get lost!”

And now I like math more and more.

owen thomas January 20, 2010 at 7:17 am

oh this is fun.

sprite:
the twist in the last line (where
i’m all “what? *wait* a minute…”)
is *real good songwriting*.
repeating the line is a classic trick; good.
keep ‘em coming.

jimmie:
the first limerick “doesn’t scan”.
(this means there’s a “beat” off somewhere;
the rhythmic pattern of a line of verse
is sometimes called its “scansion”.)
anyhow, to my mental “ear” it
sounds like i need 3 syllables
in met-er-ic. that’s cheating;
don’t.

a more advanced criticism:
the best limericks have a “punch” line.
“… a hundred percent” has a nice
mathy flavor but the entire line
appears to have been created
to make the rhyme “fall” right…
nothing much is going on in
the “story”. everybody does
this that writes limericks…
and edward lear himself
(an early “great” in nonsense)
would even *reuse the first line*
(i consider this *beyond* cheating…
it isn’t even *playing the game*).
reasonable people can differ on this.

the second one’s great.
perfect limerick scansion
and a sentiment i like.

(“studying” math “works”…
and it’s a good idea to do
enough *of* it to stay a little
ahead of the class…
but it’s far better to *do* math
and to *talk about* it.
best of all, maybe, from my
point of view as a math teacher,
is if you [do both of these and
then] *write* about it.)

keep ‘em coming!