Amusements

By Chris Boyd:

Four plus the difference between
The factorial of six and the mean
   Of twelve squared and four
   Hundred three (plus one more)
Equals double the square of fifteen.

A conjecture both deep and profound
Is whether the circle is round;
   In a paper by Erdo”s,
   Written in Kurdish,
A counterexample is found.

A graduate student from Trinity
Computed the cube of infinity;
   But it gave him the fidgets
   To write down all those digits,
So he dropped math and took up divinity.

In arctic and tropical climes,
The integers, addition, and times,
   taken (mod p) will yield
   A full finite field,
As p ranges over the primes.

This poem was written by John Saxon (an author of math textbooks).

A Dozen, a Gross and a Score,
plus three times the square root of four,
   divided by seven,
   plus five times eleven,
equals nine squared and not a bit more.

A burleycque dancer, a pip
Named Virginia, could peel in a zip;
   But she read science fiction
   And died of constriction
Attempting a Moebius strip.

If (1+x) (real close to 1)
Is raised to the power of 1
   Over x, you will find
   Here’s the value defined:
2.718281…

A challenge for many long ages
Had baffled the savants and sages.
   Yet at last came the light:
   Seems old Fermat was right–
To the margin add 200 pages.

If inside a circle a line
Hits the center and goes spine to spine
   And the line’s length is “d”
   the circumference will be
d times 3.14159

‘Tis a favorite project of mine
A new value of pi to assign.
   I would fix it at 3
   For it’s simpler, you see,
Than 3 point 1 4 1 5 9