LIMERICKS ALIVE!!

     This is my collection of favorite math limericks. I hope you enjoy them. They were found at different times from different places and merely copied in a notebook, so the sources have been lost.

     If you have a limerick -- about math, of course -- that is not found below, please send it to me via e-mail. I will include it on this page, giving you credit for the submission, naturally. :-)

1.	An algebra teacher named Drew
	Tried to find the .
	   He found it between
	   1/4 and 14,
	But couldn't get closer.  Can you?


2.	There was an old man who said, "Do
	Tell me how I should add two and two.
	   I think more and more
	   That it makes about four --
	But I fear that is almost too few."


3.	There was a young lady called Kate,
	Whose maths was right up-to-date.
	   She said, "It is fun
	   When three 3's are one --
	Which they are with modulo 8."


4.	Little Jack Horner sat in a corner,
	Trying to evaluate .
	   He disclaimed rule of thumb,
	   Found an infinite sum,
	And exclaimed "It's REAL, nary an i."


5.	A mathematician named Ray
	Says extraction of roots is child's play.
	   You don't need equations
	   Or long calculations;
	Just hot water to run on the tray.


6.	Said Mrs. Isosceles Tri,
	"That I'm sharp I've no wish to deny;
	   But I do not dare
	   To be perfectly square --
	I'm sure if I did I should die!"


7.	An arithmetic teacher named Jones
	Was reduced by the new math to groans,
	   And shortly expired.
	   Since he has not retired,
	He now serves as Napier's Bones.


8.	A mathematician confided
	That a Moebius band is one-sided.
	   And you'll get quite a laugh
	   If you cut one in half,
	For it stays in one piece when divided.


9.	A graduate student at Trinity
	Computed the square of infinity.
	   But it gave him the fidgets
	   To put down the digits,
	So he dropped math and took up divinity.


10.	A mathematician from Boole,
	Used to mispronounce words like a fool.
	   He spoke of "stastistics",
	   And "intragel" ballistics,
	"Yuler" circles and "Hospital's" rule.


11.	There was a young student from Rye,
	Who worked out the value of .
	   "It happens," said he,
	   "That it's just over 3,
	Though I'd rather you don't ask me why."


12.	There was a young student from Crewe
	Who learned how to count in base 2.
	   His sums were all done
	   With 0 and 1,
	And he found it much simpler to do.


13.	There was a young fellow called Dan,
	Who knew all about sin, cos and tan.
	   He talked rather big
	   Of his knowledge of trig --
	He did seem a clever young man.


14.	A mondern young lady called Rita,
	Buys ribbons and cloth by the metre.
	   She gets bacon and ham
	   Weighed out by the gram,
	And orders her milk by the litre.


15.	There was a maths student called Hector,
	Who couldn't tell scalar from vector.
	   "I'm quite at a loss
	   To tell a dot from a cross --
	I ought not to work in this sector."


16.	If inside a circle a line
	Hits the center and goes from spine to spine
	   And the line's length is "d",
	   The circumference will be
	d times 3.14159.


17.	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.
		-- Jon Saxton



18.	'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.
		-- Harvey L. Carter


19.	There was a young man named Floogle,
	Who tried to count up to a googol.
	   But it took such a long time
	   That one day he cried, "I'm
	Now known as the Old Man Floogle.
		-- Terry Trotter

20.	There once was a woman from Dundee,
	Whose age had last digit three.
	   If her whole age reversed
	   Is the square of the first (digit),
	Then what must the woman's age be?
		-- (Contributed by Pat Vennebush,
		    MATHCOUNTS Program)

21.            My Poem
          by Eve Andersson

     There once was a number named pi
     Who frequently liked to get high.
        All he did every day
        Was sit in his room and play
     With his imaginary friend named i.

     There once was a number named e
     Who took way too much LSD.
        She thought she was great.
        But that fact we must debate;
     We know she wasn't greater than 3.

     There once was a log named Ln
     Whose life was devoted to sin.
        She came from a tree
        Whose base was shaped like an e.
     She's the most natural log I've seen.

Eve Andersson (sweetie_pi@eveander.com) 

22.       A Pi Lymeric

     There once was a number Pi
     Very special like e and phi
        Circumference to d
        Is the ratio for me
     And it's not a multiple of i
          ---Liz Landau

Visit Liz's great website about Pi.

23.      There was a Young Lady from Bath,
         In love she was -and deeply- with Math;
                She married a Fraction, 
                But died of Subtraction,
         That algebraic Young Lady from Bath.
               --Paolo Trabucchi

24.      A "cubit" in old Pharoah's land
         Was TWENTY-EIGHT "digits", and spanned
              From elbow to finger
              Does this measure linger?
         No, it's too crude, it's been canned 

               --Andy Stanton 

25.    A limerick in honor of mathematician Paul Erdös (rhymes with Kurdish)

        A conjecture both deep and profound
        Is whether the circle is round.
           In a paper of Erdös
           Written in Kurdish
        A counterexample is found.

26.   There was a young lady named Bright
      whose speed was much greater than light.
          So she set out one day,
          In a relative way
      And returned on the previous night.

(Contributed by Philip Hunt)

27.   The system which we use is decimal,
      But the ancient Mayans used vigesimal.
          Base TWENTY, not ten
          Was what suited them then.
      Tell that to your friends and impress 'em all! 

                              ---A. Stanton 
							  
28.   The "long hundred" once signified plenty:
      It meant more than the standard "short" century
          Base TWELVE was the count
          Which increased the amount;
      TWELVE times ten gives one hundred and twenty 

                               ---A. Stanton 
29.   Integral z-squared dz 
      from 1 to the cube root of 3 
          times the cosine 
          of three pi over 9 
      equals log of the cube root of 'e'. 

           ---Betsy Devine and Joel E. Cohen 

             in Absolute Zero Gravity, Simon and Schuster, 1992, p.37.
 
30.   Archimedes, the well known truth-seeker,
      Jumping out of his bath, cried, "Eureka!"
        He ran half a mile,
        Wearing only a smile,
      And became the very first streaker.

          --found on the internet

31.   There once was a student in school,
      Who couldn't do math as a rule,
        He worked at it a lot,
        Till each answer he got,
      And now he's no longer a fool.

         --Meryl Altabet

32,  When you cut Apollonius' cone 
     There's a circle, but it's not alone. 
        A parabola, new, 
        A hyperbola, too, 
     And a perfect ellipse will be shown. 

	 ---found in The Gnarly Gnews, by Montgomery Phister, Jr. 
	 

     While this next poem is not a limerick, it nonetheless is one of my personal favorites. So I will present it here.

	Fiddle de dum, fiddle de dee,
	A ring around the moon is  times d;
	But if a hole you want repaired,
	You use the formula r2.

	Little Miss Bottenoose
	Squared the
	   hypotenuse,
	certain that she would
	   gain fame.
	Each leg did she square,
	Then she added the pair
	And cried out "The
	   results are the
	   same!"

	--Middle School Mathematics, Prentiss Hall, Book 3, p. 138.

Try this one out...

        "Cosine, secant, tangent, sine
        3.14159
        Integral, radical, u dv,
        slipstick, slide rule,
        MIT!"
            --Massachusetts Institute of Technology football cheer