Mathematics &Poetry Entropy | 17 Apr 2009
Meditation on Statistical Method
J. V. Cunningham, poet, critic, editor, and general man of letters, gained the high regard of his literary colleagues for his concise, witty, epigrammatic poetry. His epigrammatic lines range from the solemn—”Life flows to death as rivers to the sea / And life is fresh and death is salt to me”—to the humorous—noting that a reader “Dislikes my book; calls it, to my discredit / A book you can’t put down before you’ve read it.”
Meditation on Statistical Method
Plato, despair!
We prove by norms
How numbers bear
Empiric forms,
How random wrong
Will average right
If time be long
And error slight,
But in our hearts
Hyperbole
Curves and departs
To infinity.
Error is boundless.
Nor hope nor doubt,
Though both be groundless,
Will average out.
By J. V. Cunningham (1911 – 1985)
©From The Exclusions of a Rhyme: Poems and Epigrams.
on 17 Apr 2009 at 11:39 pm 1.Max Babi said …
Yes, I’ve read this poem in some anthology, Ajay.
ery ‘tongue-in-cheek’ indeed.
Reminds me of an anecdote about the poet Shelley and his mathematician friend, who sat listening to a new poem. Shelley recited :
‘ every minute a man dies,
every minuite a man is born….’
To which the maths wiz objected, quite convincingly so.
He argued if that were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill, which it is most certainly not. Therefore, after a quick calculation he further announced the correct lines should read as:
‘ every minute a man dies,
every minute 1.33man is born.’
Shelley, I believe either banged his head on the nearest wall, or banned maths wizards to visit him or tore up all the books on statistics, this is my presumption.
Cheerz!
on 20 Apr 2009 at 12:58 pm 2.Michele said …
How random wrong
Will average right
If time be long
I like this poem Ajay!
random wrong—elegantly simple yet meaningful…
on 24 Apr 2009 at 11:34 pm 3.swaps said …
“Nor hope nor doubt,
….
Will average out.”
Indeed, there is beauty in brevity. Thanks for sharing.