Archive for February 25, 2013
Math Limerick Problems
Albert Einstein said that “pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.” That may or may not be true, but all I know is that math poems are pretty awesome.
There are lots of math limericks on the web. One of my favorites:
A topologist’s child was quite hyper,
Till it wore a Möbius diaper.
The mess on the inside
Was thus on the outside,
And it was easy for someone to wipe her.
Fred Tofts, who claims to not be a mathematician but loves mathematics, recently shared a different kind of math limerick with MJ4MF. His five-line creation was not meant to deliver a punch line; rather, it presented a problem. As a comment to my blog interview with Colin Adams, he wrote, “I have not written any math jokes but have written many math limericks,” and then shared the following:
A dog’s at one end of a log;
At the opposite end is a frog.
Six feet from the frog
And eight feet from the dog
Is a right angle. How long’s the log?
I do hope that the good Mr. Tofts will share a few more of his creations with us!
The following is more of a truth than a puzzle, but fun nonetheless.
Pick a number 1 to 9, I plea,
Then multiply by 15,873.
And again times seven,
The product to leaven;
Your number will repeat six times — you’ll see.
Do you have any math limerick problems worth sharing?