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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 5-Jan-05/4:56 AM
The poem relates math to life using the unstated, but hopefully understood, notion that people hold certain truths to be inalienable, much as other people hold math theorems, granted on less evidence. The “oaf, as you unjustly call him, needed a very simple math example, else he would have doubts. Complex math can be just as convincing, but not to him. He did not prove his “theorem” but took it on abundance of evidence because that’s the way his mind works.
I did not mean that the uncertainty principle implies there is no logic, only that it is the logic of probability. Gamblers and God may have similar propensities toward bending the odds by using slogans and hope and the notion that correct thinking affects the outcome. It gets back to the idea of being created in God’s image. Maybe God works partly by nudging the outcome a tiny amount here and there, causing great change in strictly probabilistic outcome – chaos as it is – so tiny we could never catch Him at it.




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