Calculated

Latest Episodes:

Sator Square in Luberon, France — **Episode 4: What’s math got to do with poetry?** Apr 29, 2020
April is National Poetry Month. It’s also National Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month. Which means it **should be** Math Poetry month! Celebrate with this episode of Calculated, which features Archimedes, Hedy Lamarr, Fibonacci numbers, the problem with cows, and math poet JoAnne Growney.

This Sator Square is a palindrome written in a square that can be read in multiple directions. This one is Oppede, France.

Resources from this episode of Calculated:

Visit Intersections, JoAnne Growney’s blog about math poetry.

Kaz Maslanka’s website also hosts a treasure trove of math poetry.

Can an Equation be a Poem?

I wrote about math and poetry for PNAS a few years ago.

The American Mathematical Society has lots of resources about math poetry.

Got a math poem you want to share? Send it to me at poetry@truthbeautyequations.com .

Math Art: Truth, Beauty, and Equations turns one!

[[Transcript to follow!]]

Episode 3: Can math be beautiful? Apr 17, 2019

Mathematics is often described “beautiful,” but what does that mean? In this episode of Calculated, we follow those questions — first to the biological basis of mathematical beauty in the brain, and then to a mathematical art exhibit that recently wrapped up in Seattle.

Links to more information about this episode:

Transcript

ART ∩ MATH at CoCA Seattle

Dan Finkel’s Ted Talk, “Five Principles of Extraordinary Math Teaching”

Semir Zeki’s Ted Talk, “The Neurobiology of Beauty”

Semir Zeki’s 2014 paper on where math beauty happens in the brain

Math4Love

**Episode 2: Pi is Dead! Long Live Pi!** Mar 12, 2019
We celebrate pi, the most popular irrational number, on March 14. But not all is peaceful and easy for pi. This episode first revisits a quirky math anecdote about how one state voted to change the value of pi, then dives into the reasons why some math folk think we should be celebrating tau — 6.28… — instead of pi.

**Resources for this episode**

Transcript

*The Legal Values of Pi* by David Singmaster (behind a paywall)

*The Death of Archimedes, as recounted by Plutarch *

A history of the Indiana Pi Bill by Edray Goins

Episode 1: How to make an American pi quilt Mar 12, 2019

In this episode, we meet John Sims, a political and math artist in Sarasota, Florida, and find out how his quilts encode the digits of pi. Scroll down for the full transcript!

Resources for this episode

Transcript

John Sims

The Quilts of Gee’s Bend: A Slideshow (NEA)

Full text of the MIT chant

The Pi Day Anthem

Welcome Mar 06, 2019

Calculated is a new podcast collection of stories about people at the intersection of math, art, and culture. Hosted and produced by Stephen Ornes, author of Math Art: Truth, Beauty, and Equations, available April 16. Subscribe via iTunes here.

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