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Math Poem 3 (Free verse) by Dovina

Division it was that upheld him. He divided one by one third and found the answer three. Then six by two, this too, three. He tried it on seven, the log of eleven, even the cube root of two to the eighth. Everything he divided by a third of itself yielded none other than three. So he generalized and preached to the world “x / x/3 = 3. It’s true for You! Let it be carved on my stone and laughed at if ever disproved.” Now his body lies deep in the ground. His equation waves like a flag. And all who pass say there lies a man that nobody ever found wrong.

Dovina 4-Jan-05/3:21 PM

Can’t you see that it is not my intention in this series of math poems to hold rigorous mathematical standards? I want the poems to be correct mathematically, but not rigorous. The protagonist in No. 3 is not satisfying the demands that someone like Pythagoras faced in proving his well-known theory, nor should he. I’m trying to relate math to life, not math to philosophy or logic. And just in case you’re about to say that without logic, there is no math, let me add that much of the universe is running on chance to the chagrin of Einstein and others, and maybe the mind that made it that way likes the emotional tug of trying to outwit probability – “seven come eleven” and all that. No. 4 in the mill.




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