Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
Occasional Poetry - 65. Numbers Transcended
Imaginary Numbers
Imaginary numbers vex
my next door neighbor (call him Tex),
and others who will not believe
things insubstantial (they perplex).
An explanation, by your leave,
is due if over math you grieve
for numbers tangible and real;
Cartesian planes will grant reprieve.
The system, though it seems surreal,
will swap the Y for i, and deal
with hybrid quantities as plots
of vectors, should that thought appeal.
Your calculation, marked as dots,
may cause my gut to dance gavottes,
for our resultant, most complex,
has got my heart tied up in knots.
Pi
If Pi you want to calculate,
allow me to enumerate
some ways in which you may obtain
its value more approximate.
Now purists may at once disdain
to measure circles, cut in twain,
so series infinite they choose
(the Nilakantha is arcane).
But Archimedes now peruse,
two polygons he tries to fuse;
betwixt them runs a circle, lest
they touch, and so their difference lose.
His adding n-gon sides finessed
the series in its endless quest
to hold in fervent arms elate
the circle and its Pi at rest.
- 11
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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