Humorous Math Poem Contest

April is:

• Math Awareness Month (www.mathaware.org)
• National Poetry Month (www.poets.org/npm)
• National Humor Month (www.humormonth.com)

With such a glorious coincidence¹ of human-created holidays, I feel like I have to do something big. Monumental, even. But what? I thought about preparing a major April Fools prank, such as preparing a fake video about spaghetti growing on trees or publishing an article about how the Alabama legislature passed a law setting π = 3. But since those have already been done, I decided on something a little different…

Announcing the MJ4MF Humorous Math Poem Contest!

That’s right! Submit your original entries of humorous math poems.

The format is entirely up to you.

• Try your hand at the highly mathematical haiku.
• Author a sonnet about your love of numbers. 
• Use ALGEBRA to create an acrostic poem.
• Or, get a little seedy with a limerick about doing problem sets late at night.

The only rule, really, is that your submission must be completely original. Please don’t copy a poem from another website or transcribe one of J. A. Lindon’s gems.

Post your poem in the comments section, or send it to me privately at mj4mf@verizon.net. Next week, I’ll compile all entries into a single post and create a poll so visitors can vote for their favorite. The author of the best poem, as selected by the readers of the MJ4MF blog, will receive an autographed copy of Math Jokes 4 Mathy Folks, as well as a special secret prize.

Good luck, and have fun!

To get the creative juices flowing, you can read a few classics below, or check out The Square Root of Three.

Pi goes on and on and on…
And e is likewise cursed.
I wonder: Which is larger
When the digits are reversed?
     – J. A. Lindon

I used to think math was no fun,
‘Cause I couldn’t see how it was done.
But Euler’s my hero
For I now see why zero
Equals e^iπ + 1.
     – Paul Nahin

With my hands in a fire
And my arse on some ice
I’d say that, on average,
I feel rather nice.
     – an MJ4MF original (sort of)

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¹ Speaking of coincidence, John Allen Paulos wrote, “…though it is unlikely that any particular sequence of events specified beforehand will occur, there is a high probability that some remarkable sequence will be observed subsequently” (A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, p. 50). You might also like his first book, Innumeracy.

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