Humorous Math Poetry

2005-10-07T14:16:00.000-07:00

(Copyright 2006 by Montgomery Phister, Jr.)

These poems originally appeared in my humorous math newsletter, the Gnarly Gnews, which can be seen (and subscribed to, for free) at http://www.gnarlymath.com/news/gnews1_1.html Each issue of the Gnews is dated, and the dates shown below are those of the issue in which the poem appears.

Most poems are limericks. There are also Clerihews and Double Dactyls.

Clerihews: This poem form was invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956). It has four lines. The first is a person's name, and the second line must rhyme with the first. The third and fourth lines must rhyme with each other.

Double Dactyls: The Double-Dactyl has 2 stanzas each of four Double-Dactyl lines. (A dactyl has three syllables, with the accent on the first.) The last lines the two stanzas must rhyme and must have the last two syllables left off. The first line should be a jingle, the second a name, and one line in the second stanza should consist of one word.

Southern Europe, 26172 B.C.

Cro-Magnon Murrdh
Spent much of his time finding the right word.
He'd invent something that might bring him fame,
But he couldn't talk about it until he gave it a name.

The artist in ancient Lascaux
Did his work such a long time ago
That only he knew,
How to count what he drew --
All those buffalo, rhinos and doe.

Memphis, Egypt, 2590 BC

Imhotep
Is a dude who's really hep.
Because everyone knows he gets his kicks
From inventing pyramids, healing people, revising calendars, and improving hieroglyphics.

If you ever converse with King Zoser
And he gives you a task, don't say 'No, sir'.
To avoid great distress
You should always say 'yes'
For his anger could make you moroser.

Knossos, Crete , 1480 BC,

The bull charged, and I gave a jump.
I hoped that I'd land on his rump.
But I jumped far too low
When I stubbed my darned toe
And crashed with a thump like a chump.

El-Amarna, Egypt, 1342 BC
Queen Nefertiti
Has a beautiful right eye.
Of course, her left eye is beautiful, too.
But future generations won't know about it
unless Tuthmose finds a gem of a suitable hue.

(For those few who may not know, the Queen's name does rhyme with "right eye", and not with "sweet tea".)

The pharaoh's Complaint
You'd think I must have a good life
With six daughters and one lovely wife.
But they spend their time shopping
And talk without stopping --
My palace: headquarters of strife!

Sardis, Lydia, 558 BC

Pythagoras
Reached deep into his trick bag for us
And came up with a rule which, by way of dingers, is a clear hum.
So it will forever be called the Pythagorean Theorem.

King Croesus is quite well-to-do.
He thinks wealth will buy happiness, too.
But he won't go astray, he's
Got Aesop and Thales
To help him keep wisdom in view.

Syracuse, 430 BC

If ever you want to compute
And don't need to take a square root,
If used with some skill
An abacus will
Show everyone you are astute

Athens, Greece, 350 BC

Plato
Was not a man who ate crow.
He won no medals in the 90th Olympic Games
But that didn't bother him; winning was never one of his aims.

Old Plato was sure that he knew
That the world is divided in two.
Phenomena: one
Idea: we're done
So which of these figments is you?

Alexandria, Egypt, 293 BC

I often have looked at the Sphinx
And have figured out just what she thinks.
She's using her math,
To compute that her bath
Will need water from 10,000 sinks.

Rome, Italy, 1 A.D.

Augustus Caesar
Was really Augustus the Seizer.
Roman soldiers took over Africa, Spain, Egypt, Galatia, and Gaul,
And if the local folks didn't like it, there was nothing they could do about it at all.

We Romans are famous for war
The Armies have taken us far.
But in science we're sloppy,
We don't think, we copy.
Our gray matter's way below par.

Tikal, Guatemala, 256 AD

King Cavizimah
Has only one flaw.
He thinks it's all the same
Whether you watch mud dry and grass grow or the Ballgame.

There was a sweet girl from Tikal
Who said, as she bought out the mall,
"Bar-dots mystify a
Few folks here in Maya
But numbers don't faze me at all."

Alexandria, Egypt, 403 AD

When you cut Apollonius' cone
There's a circle, but it's not alone.
A parabola, new,
A hyperbola, too,
And a perfect ellipse will be shown.

Theon
Feels everyone should agree on
The elegance of the spheres which rotate about the earth,
And the brilliance of his daughter Hypatia, whose charm and beauty admit no dearth.

Baghdad, 208 AH

A genie, to boost his career,
Planned to make all Baghdad disappear.
But the kids in the city
Soon formed a committee
And stuck his left foot in his ear.

Shang-Tu, China, 1275

We Chinese invented the kite
And a top which flies up out of sight.
So workers -- beware!
With such things in the air
Our wheelbarrows soon may take flight.

London, England, 1490 AD
William Caxton

He really just wanted to write,
And his friends thought his work a delight.
So he toiled without stint
'Till he learned how to print,
And now books are a quite common sight.

Battista Alberti
Was just about thirty
When he learned of Brunelleschi's perspective
And wrote a book about it, to show the world it was very effective.

London, England, 1599

A lady who lived in a vault
Dropped a sixty-pound box full of salt.
When it fell on her toe
She exclaimed, "I just know
That it's all Galileo's darn fault. "

Nicolaus Copernicus
Always loved to discuss
A particular subject he found full of mirth:
That everybody thinks the sun goes 'round the earth.

Florence, Italy, 1618

Galileo Galilei
Built a telescope with which he can see
Jupiter and Venus and Mars and Saturn and Mercury and the Moon and the Sun.
But the important thing is, he's having lots of fun.

There once was a fellow named Ptolemy
Whose earth-centered world seemed quite small to me.
'Till Kepler's three laws
Earned a thousand hurrahs
And made Ptolemy's plan a catastrophe

Paris, France, 1645

Renee Descartes
Found out how to plot algebra on a chart.
He was a mathematician and a soldier and called a Princess ma'am,
But he'll be forever famous because he was the first to say, 'I think, therefore I am.'

Pascal and Descartes and Fermat:
The mailbox allowed them to chat.
They were all born in France
By some curious chance,
And each was a really cool cat.

London, England, 1699

Samuel Pepys
Is known by the company he keeps.
He's hobnobbed with three Kings,a dozen Dukes and Duchesses, and countless soldiers, mayors, and gentlemen,
Not to mention Comet Halley, Apple-fall Newton, and St. Paul's Wren.

Mr. Newton's Maxims
"The colors all add up to white.
You'll weigh less at some lofty height.
"Law two says it's smart
"When you crash in your cart
"To hold tight with all of your might."

Hanover, Holy Roman Empire, 1715

A great circle inside a sphere
Has an area, it would appear,
Exactly one quarter
Not longer or shorter
Of that of the sphere -- is that clear?

Johann Bernoulli
Was not a man who could be called unruly,
But when the English declared that Gottfried Leibniz was not the inventor of the calculus,
Johann put up what everyone agreed was a colossal fuss.

Konigsberg, Russia, 1735

The Konigsberg puzzle succeeded
In giving us fame, which we needed.
But that darned Mr. Euler,
The rotten old spoiler,
Has solved it despite how we pleaded.

In Konigsberg, bridge number seven
Made us famous. Then Euler, by heaven,
Unriddled our game.
So to regain our fame
We'll build bridges eight through eleven.

Berlin, 1748

Leonhard Euler
Is certainly a noteworthy toiler
Among other things he designed ships
And calculated the motion of the moon
And named the square root of minus one
And invented e
All the while being the doting father of a growing family.

The shape of the earth surely might
Be a bit like an eggplant upright
But Euler computed
What no one refuted;
The shape of a grapefruit's just right.

Cork, Ireland, 1855

Carl Frederick Gauss
Was never one to grouse.
But when his father wanted him to lay bricks
He said he really preferred mathematics.

George Boole
Had one noteworthy rule.
If you're going to write, not in pencil but in ink
Before you start writing, you'd better think.

The algebra cooked up by Boole
Deals, of all things, with elephants who'll
Be frightened of mice,
And think broccoli nice,
Or be cross-eyed. Now isn't that cool?

Oxford, England, 1866

Lewis Carroll
Was very proper in his choice of apparel.
But how could a man all of whose suits were either black or white
Invent a tale so full of impossible nonsense, outrageous puns, simple absurdity,
and hilarious delight?

A New Nonsense Rhyme, written at our request by Mr. Carroll
"There's old King Cole who sings for his supper
With pretty maids all in a row.
He stole the tarts to look at the Queen
And worried that we shall have snow.

He had a great fall on frogs and snails
And saw five golden rings
With cows in the corn who'd lost their sheep,
But Oh, for a horse with wings.

He begged for the moon to give him light,
Eating a Christmas pie,
But ran up the clock while the cupboard was bare,
With a pocket full of rye.

So shut the door to buckle your shoe,
(It was against the rule.)
Just study your math and you shall have music
Wherever you go to school."

New York City, 1879

Diller a Dollar a
Albert A. Michelson
Hoped he could measure the
Quickness of light.

Built him a mirror that
Whirlaboutationally
Gave him an angle that
Caused him delight.

Indiana, 1897

The Seaman's Pi
A sailor whose math we deplore
Measured circles when he was ashore.
He made us all sigh
And we wanted to cry
So we asked him just why
He liked to rely
On a figure for pi
That was 3 and not 3.14.

London, 1910

Sir Francis Galton
Believed that travelling was all fun.
But he also founded fingerprinting and invented the standard deviation
So he was knighted by the king, and was the subject of much admiration.

A Trinity College degree
Is a jewel, we all must agree.
A prize that was taken
By Hardy and Bacon
King Edward and Newton and me.

Berlin, Germany, 1916

Albert Einstein
Thought the condition of Physics was far from fine.
But in studying time and length and mass
He managed to turn all of science topsy-turvy, alas

When Newton found gravity's laws
He knew not what gravity was.
But he'd never embrace
The idea that space
Being bent out of shape was the cause.

Washington, DC 1928

Henry Ford
Made an auto everyone could afford.
But there's one thing all of these Model T's lack:
You can pick any color you like for your car, as long as the color you choose is black.

Inventing is Edison's line,
And his numerous patents all shine.
He starts with a notion
Then works with devotion
To polish, improve and refine.

1995

When Patience went out to the Mall,
She was planning on having a ball.
But to her dismay
All her plans went astray
And her ball, all-in-all, took a fall.

1999

A beautiful asp named Lenore
Found sums were a terrible bore.
"If I were an adder,
I'd be a lot gladder,
And would know 2 + 2 = 4."

2000

Chaos
A toad who was living in Philly
Gave a leap his friends thought was a dilly.
He said, "Butterflies pooh,
They just haven't a clue!
Hey! my jump caused an earthquake in Chile."

"Since day follows night," they told Fawn,
"It is darkness that causes the dawn."
But Fawn said her cat
Followed her, too, and that
Didn't prove that the cat's caused by Fawn.

A youngster from Crete vowed he'd try
To say nothing, and thus tell no lie.
He began to perspire
When told "You're a liar."
Now tell me. How should he reply?

2001

Mr. Paige was a flinger who stressed
Every batter. He gave them no rest.
His bee balls and Long Toms
Gave sluggers some strong qualms.
DiMaggio said Satch was the best.

(Date??) The Island of Nomath
The strangers use "numbers" to add.
They tell us "few-many" is mad.
But we won't agree
To their onetwoandthree.
And we're sure fourfivesix is a fad.

2002

Reporters of all kinds galore
Think that math is a terrible bore.
In composing the news
They're quite sure that two twos
Equal three, eight, or five, but not four.

Dave Campo
Was said to have stubbed his toe.
But the reporter who complained about his "baffling decision"
Was, like most reporters, a person with absolutely no mathematical vision.

Euclid
Didn't want to be outdid.
So to ensure his eternal fame
On the front page of all our geometry books he put his name.

If you're an enchanted admirer
Of your grocery's Nation'l Enquirer.
You've found, I am sure
That you've much to endure
With the news getting direr and direr.

2003

If sometime you're out for a sail
And find yourself caught in a gale
With the wind all amok
And your crew horror-struck --
I hope that you've learned how to bail.

Frank Benford
Fiddled with math when bored.
He looked into the work of Simon Newcomb,
And invented Benford's Law, so he and Simon would be a mathematical twosome.

To figure the tip when you've dined
There's that fifteen percent you must find.
You need little skill --
Take a tenth of the bill,
Then add half -- it's all done in your mind.

2004

The Lone Ranger
Seemed always to be in danger.
And though faithful Tonto was always at his side, as far as I know,
When he rode off, it was always his horse Silver that got the final heigh-ho.

Runaway Steed
The galloping gave me a pain,
As I mainly clung tight to the mane.
My yelling, of course,
At the horse made me hoarse
While I strained to rein in in the rain.

Charles Henry Dow
Practically had a cow.
All by himself he invented a measure that's one of the stock market's cornerstones,
Only to find everybody called it not the Dow average, but the "Dow-Jones".

The foresight and skill of Bill Gates
Made Microsoft one of the greats.
And you'll be rich, too,
If hard work, derring-do
And ambition are some of your traits.

Julia Payette
Doesn't have a single regret.
"I could have been a doctor or a teacher or a I-don't-know-what.
But the best of all possible jobs is being an engineering astronaut."

When thinking of awesome careers
You might want to explore new frontiers.
You could travel in space,
Make a digital face,
Or build robots, like these engineers.

2005

Diller a dollar a
Elginex Tripgofar
Loves to go searching for
What is bizarre.

Doesn’t believe there are
Mythopoetical
Animals anywhere
Nearby or far.

We've often admired the whale,
A beast who's both hearty and hale.
And we don't think his clicks
Are just length-measure tricks.
We'll bet that he's telling a tale.

Around the whole world went both Drake
And Magellan, for royalty's sake.
But each gained a day
Without going astray,
And were sure they'd not made a mistake.

Pat-a-cake pat-a-cake
Claudius Ptolemy
Hit upon latitude
Longitude, too

Also put north at the
Top, so today all our
Diagrammatical
Maps have that view.

Governor Elbridge Gerry
Must have believed in the tooth fairy
If he imagined no one would think it was pandering
When he propped up his party by gerrymandering.

2006

Secret Codes
Edgar Allan Poe
Almost certainly didn't know
That his famous story "The Purloined Letter"
Was sort of a kind of Steganography, only better

We heard someone told Julius Caesar
To code a love note needs a key, sir
So tell your good wife
She's the light of your life
That's a cipher we're certain would please her."

Non-Euclidean Geometry
Geometry's flatness was quite,
To Euclid, a source of delight
Though Riemann's was round
But today we have found
That both of them clearly were right.

Old Euclid's Geometry bloomed
Until Riemann declared it was doomed.
And after some years,
Non-euclidean spheres
Supported what Riemann assumed .

2007 AD

Francis Bacon
Was not mistaken.
When he saw how neatly Africa and South America fit.
But instead of proposing that the continents moved, he quit.

2008 AD

Al Gore
Let his imagination soar
Probably he didn't think the real inventors would be upset
When he insisted that he had invented the Internet.

The Frenchmen invented the meter,
The gram, centigrade, and the liter.
The foot, quart, and pound
Lost a whole lot of ground
To a system which was a lot neater.

Gabriel Mouton
Was really in a whoop-de-doo zone.
A hundred years before the kilometer came to be
He proposed that the size of the Earth was the key.

To learn about birthdays and queues
And doors where you're frightened to choose
One method supreme
Functions just like a dream.
You've guessed -- Monte Carlo's good news.

2009 AD

An Ode to Trigonometry

To understand the heavens or to find your way at sea
There's nothing near as useful as some Trigonometry
And if you don't remember ,you surely are a goose
The sine equals the opposite side divided by the hypotenuse.

Pythagoras is nifty and old Euclid is just great
But neither one knew all the things that trig could calculate
So don't forget the definitions, they are not abstruse.
The cosine is the near side divided by the hypotenuse.

We'll never know exactly who it was invented trig
He may have been a little man, he may have been a big.
But if you know your regulations he'll be satisfied.
The tangent equal the opposite side divided by the near side.

The sine, cosine, and tangent having nicely been defined
A final rule with cleverness can quickly be divined
Some algebra will show you an equation that will shine.
The tangent equals the sine divided by the cosine.

Lumpety, bumpety
Claudius Ptolemy
Thought that the earth was the
Center of all

But that was foolish for
NicoCopernicus
Proved that the sun in the
Middle does fall.

Sir Isaac Newton
When it came to new ideas figured if he saw one he knew one.
So after a great deal of thought about gravity he declared:
F = GMm/r²

Quadratics

You'll certaintly be a fine hero
By remembering the rule we display
If ax² + bx + c = 0
Then x = ( -b +- sqrt(b² - 4ac)) / 2a

A scientist name Bill Strongarming
Wasn't sure that our globe's really warming.
In doubting the rule
He was Gored as a fool
By believers with insults alarming

Diller-a dollar-a
Albert A. Michelson
Hoped he could measure the
Quickness of light.

Built him a mirror that
Whirlaboutationally
Gave him an angle that
Caused him delight.

Alexander Graham Bell
In inventing was known to excel.
He thought the telegraph was a fine idea
But he knew his telephone would turn out to be the communication panacea.

Now Bell is a mighty fine name,
And Michelson's clearly the same
But sadly these Als
Had never been pals
Though both were accustomed to fame.

2145 AD

A cowboy who went to the sun
Thought the place was a whole lot of fun.
He wanted to stay,
But his pony said "neigh"!
----And that is a terrible pun.

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