Two New Poems
Negative Dependence Harder to Prove Than Should Be
A couple was made
For torment. LISTEN: Proving this holds formally is often more difficult than one would expect.
Courtship, orchestrated
By an absent queen.
Courtship, a piano
Tuned by blindness.
A tone, spreading. The woman
Arranges the shower curtain’s decorative veil
Outside the tub. The man, in passing,
Pushes it inside.
The man suggests a party, a trip.
The woman laughs bitterly.
Why should we care? Well, it turns out that if a collection of random variables are negatively associated, then even though they are dependent, you can just apply your standard Chernoff bounds to them, without a care.
The tone
Of airless arguments.
Anyhow, we couldn’t prove negative dependence easily, so we ended up using an uglier martingale argument that sufficed.
He has worn Chernoff’s bounds.
She has worn a martingale like this.
It Is Remarkable How Closely the History of the Apple Tree is Connected with that of Man says Henry David Thoreau
John Chapman waded down the Ohio
“To save shoe leather.”
his nickname followed, relentlessly
Eating the truth.
He didn’t scatter seeds,
But planted orchards on credit,
Leaving behind
Pages of Emanuel Swedenborg, carefully
Torn. LISTEN:
CONCERNING THE INHABITANTS OF EARTH MARS
Spirits appeared in front to the left, who were said to be from Earth Mars, and who declared themselves holy; not that they were holy [in themselves].
He slept in barns or spare rooms.
The wealthy touched the holy bell
Of the good hotel, stained with the scent
Of the ACTRESS who hid
A transparent sin. His sleep
Spoke to her.
LISTEN: They subsist upon different kinds of pulse, as also upon a certain round fruit which springs up immediately from the ground, not to mention the fruits of trees.
No one knows where he has sprung up.
The Hubble telescope reports Mars’s surface
Is changing rapidly, reddening.
~
Angela Ball