On the subject of "found poetry" in mathematics, I've often thought that the following sentence (from Marsden's book on manifolds; I've modified the typography) has some of the characteristics of modern poetry: For example, the restriction of any vector bundle to a chart domain of the base defined by a vector bundle chart gives a bundle isomorphic to the local vector bundle. The combination of obscurity and banality is what impresses me. :-) Jim Propp On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 9:59 PM, Gareth McCaughan < gareth.mccaughan@pobox.com> wrote:
On 28/04/2015 02:12, Bill Gosper wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whewell famously wrote an accidental poem which I've never seen correctly quoted: "Hence no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into a horizontal line which is accurately straight"
I've seen it before with "... which shall be absolutely straight", and it's pretty obvious why: that has the "correct" metre, unlike what Whewell apparently actually wrote.
-- g
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