Month: March 2021

There’s a tradition in Australia of “Bush Poetry“. Blokes living off in the bush write poetry about what life’s like for them out there. None of your pansy fine art poetry. Bush poetry.

There was an open-mic night here recently, so I thought I’d try my hand at some Arctic Bush Poetry. Of course, I spend my time in front of computer doing math, so this one is called:

Arctic Statistician

Way up past that there tree line
is where I correlate
out on the windy tundra
my identities equate

If I need a transformation
I’ll derive it on the land
Those folks down in the cities
They wouldn’t understand

Coz I’m not ON some cozy tangent
absorbing midnight sun
I make my math the hard way
And I’ll tell you how it’s done

If I wanna feed my family
I’d best get off my arse
Head out into the real world
Where the integers are sparse

I’ll fuel up my binomial
Till the power’s gettin’ high
Then diverge across them frozen lakes
That expand right to the sky

My walks seem almost random
While I’m seeking out my prey
I’m watching for a herd or flock
Moving like a Markov chain

When I fin’ly trace their matrix
Their range in my domain
I’m determinant to get them
But I gotta be restrained

So I’ll estimate the distance
Of the group and of the field
I’ll compute the discrete factors
That affect my hunting yield

Then I’ll sight in my equations
I’ll carefully weight my shot
And squeezing the divisor
I’ll solve the bloody lot

I’ll pull out their inner products
Skin right round the outside
I’ll quarter them and halve them
And make them into Pi

The northern lights above me
The air biting my face
Regressing and predicting
This glorious subspace

I’ll tan the complex numbers
I’ll scoop out both their Is
I’ll dry em out and smoke em good
’till the real part simplifies

I’ll track down hidden data
To burrows where they hide
I’ll set my snares around them
Primed, ready to divide

And when they start converging
All mean and imprecise
I’ll sum ’em up along that line
And clean ’em up real nice

I’ll fish for that kurtosis
Deep underneath the ice
Sum bait, Sum lure, Sum X+1
And multiple it twice

So the year runs its sequence
The snow melts in the sun
Time harmonically progresses
But the math work ain’t yet done

I gather up the variance
From boggy autumn stats
I cook up an ANOVA
Full of errors, meats and fats

And in the summer season
I count the bugs that buzz
Their combinatoric nuisance
Won’t bother me because

I stay up way past midnight
With the sun still shinning bright
Strung out, sleepless but striving still
For statistical insight

Till I find my polar axis
Spin my numbers round and round
Coordinate my limits
Get my feet back on the ground

I turn my thinking southward
Across the taiga plains
Infinity converges
Till one insight remains

These arctic folk around me
Who greet me in the street
We’re all in this together
And that means everything to me

So as the cold starts to confine me
And my thought turn all to goo
My fingers can’t work door nobs
And my math starts failing too

But I’m no longer decreasing
Into deep winter despair
I can function in this cold null space
Coz there’s folk here who care

So that’s my occupation
And where I make my mark
I don’t need no damn chalkboard
In this endless winter dark

I’m no armchair academic
Who’ll sit and postulate
Not some idle theoretician
Or their complex conjugate

I’m no second rate derivative
or even third or fourth
I’m an arctic statistician
A math man, of the north