After having great fun on the Summarize a Novel in a Limerick thread, I thought somedoper may be able to help me discover the author of a mathematical limerick I ran across many years ago. Here it is. If anyone knows the author, I’d love to hear from you!
12 + 144 + 20 + 3√4
------------------------- + (5 x 11) = 3[4] + 0
7
I can’t get it to print correctly here – the [4] should be in superscript, an exponent with 3 as the base.
The limerick parsed
A dozen, a gross, and a score
plus three times the square root of four
divided by seven
plus five times eleven
equals three to the fourth and no more.
This page credits John Saxon with a very similar (but not identical) poem.
I read the last line as “Equals three to the power of four.”
Thanks for the cite, chukhung!
Biffy, your reading is elegant, but unfortunately it rhymes a word with itself.
Just realized that myself. :smack:
I prefer this one:
Integral t-squared dt
From one to the cube root of three
All times the cosine
Of (3 pi) upon nine
Equals log of the cube root of e.
Do you have that in an equation? I’d love to add it to my collection of poems. (I transcribe poems I enjoy by hand, just to get them “in my fingers”.)
Will you accept topology as a branch of mathematics?
*A mathematician confided
That the Mobius band is one-sided.
“You’ll get quite a laugh
If you cut one in half,
For it stays in one piece when divided.”
A mathematician named Klein
Thought the Mobius band divine.
He said, “If you glue
The edges of two
You make a weird bottle like mine!”
Sorry, I’ve no idea how to post a symbol for “definite integral from 1 to cube root 3”… otherwise you write it down much as it’s written…
intg(1,cuberoot(3))(t[sup]2[/sup]dt).cos 3p/9 = ln(cuberoot(e)).
It is mathematically correct assuming that you use radians and natural logarithms.
I have it as a livejournal icon, but I use ‘z’ instead of ‘t’. I used MS Word’s equation editor for it, as I recall.
Ah well, “z” wouldn’t rhyme in English pronunciation, you know.
…And that’s the thousandth post up on something completely pointless and irrelevant! Go me! 