Number Debate Poem by Alexander Shaumyan

Once pi and i had a debate
About which is better
A square root of minus one
Or being a Greek letter.

'Be rational, ' said i to pi,
'You make things complicated-
No matter how they measure you,
You always come truncated.'

Said pi to i: 'So what, my friend,
It's really no big deal-
I'm transcendental unlike you,
And you aren't even real.'

'But if you want to be exact,
Then you come nowhere near
To finding areas of disks
Or a volume of a sphere'.

Said i to pi: 'It may be so,
But you forgot to mention
That you're a point on a line,
And I have two dimensions.'

'For if you want nth roots of one,
Therein is my appeal-
I'll find all roots of one for you-
Imaginary and real.'

'And I can add and multiply
All points in a plane,
For I'm more than decimals
By real line constrained.'

While they continued to debate,
Infinity appeared,
Saying to both pi and i:
'You both are nowhere near.'

'You both are finite, real or not,
But I'd take a bet
That none of you can match the size
Of countable sets.'

So it was settled-pi and i
Were finally set free,
For both found that they're too small
To match infinity.


March 26,2008