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Finding Your Mathematical Roots: Inclusion And Identity Development In Mathematics, Linda Mcguire

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This paper details a semester-long course project that has been successfully adapted for use in mathematics courses ranging from introductory level, general-education classes to advanced courses in the mathematics major. Through creating aspirational mathematical family trees and writing mathematical autobiographies, this assignment is designed to help battle belonging uncertainty, to challenge students to self-situate in relation to the history of mathematical and scientific knowledge, and to make visible a student’s developing identity in mathematics and, more broadly, in STEM.

The construction and scaffolding of the project, assignments, examples of student work, foundational readings, assessment and outcomes, and adaptation strategies for …

Cookie(X) = 1/2, Lawrence M. Lesser

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This poem applies the concept of expected value, denoted E(X), to the context of any limited resources two parties desire. Usually, "you divide, I choose" keeps pieces equal enough to preempt charges of unfairness. But if one piece is much larger, many distrust the unbiased (in expected value) process of a coin flip giving each person the same chance at the bigger piece and the same cookie amount on average: E(X) = (1/2)p + (1/2)(1-p) = 1/2

Teaching Mathematics With Poetry: Some Activities, Alexis E. Langellier

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

During the summer of 2021, I experimented with a new way of getting children excited about mathematics: math poetry. Math can be a trigger word for some children and many adults. I wanted to find a way to make learning math fun—without the students knowing they’re doing math. In this paper I describe some activities I used with students ranging from grades K-12 to the college level and share several poem examples, from students in grades two to eight.

The Use And Development Of Mathematics Within Creative Literature, Toby S C Peres

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This paper presents a study on the extent to which creative literature been used as a vessel to carry forward the development of mathematical thought. The role of mathematics as a driving force for literature is highlighted, and while many examples exist that clearly show an attempt to disperse mathematical ideas, with Lewis Carroll, OuLiPo and ancient poetry considered, the argument that the sole purpose of the writings was for the sake of mathematical development is not clear-cut.

Squate, Tom Blackford

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This is the story of a middle school student who befriends an irrational number, the square root of eight.

Irruption Of The New: Truth, Events, History, Parallels, Fidelity, David L. Neel

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

A historical meditation on non-Euclidean geometry, three Jesuits, a radical egalitarian mathematical philosopher, and the atom bomb, structured by word-count with attention to divisors of 441 and the Fano plane.

So Long My Friend, Bryan Mcnair

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Wrong Way, Joseph Chaney

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

The Uncertainty Of Confidence, Michael J. Leach

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This is a free-verse poem about the estimation of population parameters in statistical models. The spacing of words is intended to reflect uncertainty.

Mathematical Rigor From Within, Lowell Abrams

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

There is a certain feel that is unique to the rarefied context of rigorous mathematics. These poems constitute an exploration of my experience of mathematical rigor when I am in the midst of exercising my skills as a research mathematician.

How To Measure A Coastline, Nora E. Culik

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

The infinite shoreline of Lake Superior is embedded in the mathematical imagination, the memory of its stony beaches, and in the unifying consciousness that holds them all, just as the lake itself lies cradled in the land. The narrator of these paradoxes finds the lake, its border, and the calculi strewn along its shore a place a space between worlds where we rediscover that we can’t measure what we can’t locate, and can’t locate what we can’t measure, even the versions of ourselves.

Changes And Deltas, Jim Wolper

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Lecturing about Mathematics is like playing Jazz.

Mental Logic: Two Poems, Ashley Delvento

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

My submission is comprised of two poems that aim to intertwine mathematical themes with that of creative struggle, a working title for this pairing being “Mental Logic”. The first poem, ‘-ematics’ is a literary work created in the midst of mathematical problem solving. Being an avid writer and a mathematics enthusiast, the theme of this poem struck me while completing the University of Rochester Mathematics Olympiad. There seems to be a belief that literary creativity and mathematics cannot compliment one another, but throughout solving a probability problem on this Olympiad proved to be the ultimate moment of inspiration. This poem …

Our Binary World, Simona Carini

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

A poem about counting in binary, life, and love.

What The Wasp Said, Hugh C. Culik

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

On a bright spring day, the ancient building housing the English and Logic Departments begins to slowly collapse on itself, trapping McMann (an inept English professor) and Lucy Curt (a logician) in the office they share. As the Fibonacci repetitions of the building’s brickwork slowly peel away, McMann seizes the moment to tell Lucy stories about skunks, stories whose recurrent pattern finally leads to the unrecognized connection between a “message” burned into his ear by a wasp and the orderly universe for which he cannot find a language. At last, he looks up only to see Lucy descending a ladder, …

When Mercy Seasons Justice, Basant K B

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This is based on the simple mathematical concept of ratio, which tends to get more intricate the more one thinks about it.

Jesus And The Walnuts, Hugh C. Culik

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

In “Jesus & the Walnuts,” a hapless English professor invokes fragments of mathematical thought to integrate his hunger for a knowable world with his affection for the logician with whom he shares an office. While “not even wrong” and horribly clumsy, his aspirations are iterations of the drive for order and meaning that are shared across disciplinary knowledge . . . and the hungers of the heart.

My Sets And Sexuality, Andres Sanchez

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

It was only with the application of set theory to my own personal life that I discovered my true identity and sexuality. In this exploratory, personal essay, I detail my own discovery of my sexuality through mathematics and how this math has become a lens through which I view the world. And, with new knowledge of literary criticism in hand, I can now retroactively describe the thoughts I had in this discovery process.

Cicadas, Gene Grabiner

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Disciple, Jessica K. Sklar

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This is a love poem for mathematics.

A Generalised Song, Will Turner

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

We consider parallels between words and music. We call a triple of structures, one verbal, one musical, and one mathematical, in which the mathematical structure is related to the verbal and musical structures, a generalised song. With the intention of exhibiting the potential of this form, we describe a generalised song called ‘Cube’.

The University Of Montana Department Of Mathematics Post-Apocalyptic Working Seminar, Kenan A. Ince

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

16, Dan Mcquillan

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This 15 word poem suggests that the reader count the words of the poem. Since every line has half as many words as the previous line, and since the poem urges the reader to keep counting forever, one imagines a total of 16 words.

Discriminant, Lauren K. Carlson

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This poem is a reaction to a poem written about being forced to take a Home Economics class in the 1960's. As a woman born subsequent to this time period, I was never forced to study home economics, but was required to study pre-calculus. Unfortunately, at the time I could not appreciate this requirement. The irony of my poem is that it celebrates the subject it claims to reject.

This poem also suggests that gender discrimination requires a more complex solution than merely discontinuing home economics, and doing so limits the choices feminism intends to protect. Rejecting gender roles may …

An Algorithm For Counting The Hair On Your Head, Eli M. Barr

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

A comedic poem which uses the form of an algorithm for poetic effect.

Moving Between Inner And Outer Worlds, Lawrence M. Lesser

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

This poetry folder consists of the author’s introductory reflection followed by ten new poems that connect explicitly or implicitly to mathematics, statistics, or the teaching and learning of that content.

Our Lady, Queen Of Undecidable Propositions, Hugh C. Culik

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Boundary systems take many forms: personal, historical, mathematical, and in the case of an elderly Jesuit and a young mathematician, a struggle to identify the larger boundary that both connects them and provides their separate identities. Their ragged conversation is couched in a pastiche of historical, popular, and personal notions of mathematics; however their language is simultaneously natural and mathematical so that it points to the irremediable gaps that the multitude of our languages attempt to "solve." Father McMann pages through his list of such incommensurables: female/male, young/old, parabola/limit, rational/surd and “all the other 88 asynchronies that plagued his dreams …

An Exercise On Limits, Manya Raman-Sundström

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

The Greatest Integer Function, Alanna Rae

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Adversus Mathematicos, Christopher Norris

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

A poem about relationship between mathematics and the human experience of time.