HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY

ODE TO MATHEMATICS


                   PLUS OR MINUS 

To integrate or differentiate that is the equation:
Whether ‘tis nobler to use a calculator or to suffer
The pangs and anguish of outrageous mental arithmetic,
Or to take arms against a sea of confusing symbols,
And by opposing solve them? To add, to multiply,
No more; and by infinity to say we end 
The endless and the thousand natural ratios
Thus mathematics is heir to, ‘tis a summation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To add, to multiply;
To multiply: perchance to compute: ay, there’s the 
 orb!
For in those equations what solutions may come
When we have shuffled off this mental block,
Must give us pride: there’s the respect of logarithms
That makes simplicity of so long multiplications;
For who would bear the vectors and tangents of time,

The quadratic roots, the triangle’s symmetry
The pangs of despised long division, the laws of motion,
The insolence of Pi and the fractal patterns
That were patiently configured of the unholy tasks,
When he a mathematician might his doubters make
With a conic section? Who would theorems bear
To grunt and sweat without a computer,
But that the dread of some thing mathematical, like death,
The undiscover’d country from whose hyperbolic orbit
No astronaut returns, puzzles the will to solve
And makes us rather bear those unsolved problems we have
Than fly to other disciplines that we know not of?
Thus calculus does make cowards of us all
And thus the natural spectrum of solutions
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cost of fear
And enterprises of infinite diameters and probabilities
With this regard their wave lengths turn awry,
And lose the name of certainty. – Sofware now!
The logical Pythagoras! critical thinker, in thy triangle
Be all my sines and cosines remembered.
Adapted by Professor Richard A. Cavello, HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY
Illustrated by Marc R. Cavello


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