Some citizens of Konigsberg Were walking on the strand Beside the Rivel Pregel With its seven bridges spanned 'Oh Euler, come and walk with us', Those burghers did beseech, 'We'll walk the seven bridges o'er And pass but once by each'. 'It can't be done', thus Euler cried. Here comes the QED. Your islands are but vertices And four have odd degree. From Konigsberg to Konig's book So runs the graphic tale And still it grows more colourful In Michigan and Yale. William Tutte On Apr 27, 2015, at 8:16 PM, James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
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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