Category Archives: Poetry

Airline Logic

Humor, Mathematical Humor, Poetry, Problem Solving, Recreational Math, Singapore Math, , , , , , , , , ,
Meme © Anon.

Airline Logic

Sixty-eight grounded,
one-two-four sails through the gate.
Airline math is odd.

Whether it’s depicted as a cartoon or a meme, we all laugh at this unfair weight preference (or weight discrimination), yet we seem powerless to do anything about this airline logic—or illogic.

If airlines truly care about their passengers’ welfare, isn’t it long overdue that they examine this “weight bias” that favors one group while discriminating against another?

If some airlines have already considered charging larger passengers double fare because they need to occupy two seats, shouldn’t they also seriously consider the total weight of every passenger plus their luggage to create a fairer system?

Meme © Anon.

A Fairer Charge

A fairer charge: taking into account the weight of both the passenger and their luggage? How soon would this new normal in regional and international travel take place, to the satisfaction of both airlines and customers?

Would we start seeing more toddlers and underweight kids with oversized luggage lining up to check in?

The chaotic and/or comical scene at the airport or in immigration would make boarding less boring.

Logically & fairly yours

© Yan Kow Cheong, September 27, 2026.

Math is a young woman’s game too

Poetry, Problem Solving, Recreational Math, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Dr. Joan Birman, nonagenarian mathematician

A tanka that celebrates a mentor-mentee mathematical journey:

The Birman-Vasudha Collaboration

A female version
of Hardy-Ramanujan—
with fellow Brendle,
the trio proved a years-long
unsolved braid-theory knot.

The story of a 92-year-old mathematician mentoring her teenage apprentice shows that math isn’t just a young man’s game, but also a young (and old) woman’s game. It also debunks the myth that if you haven’t produced or published your best math by forty, your productivity is only heading south from then on.

Joan Birman (now 99), Tara E. Brendle, and Vasudha Bharathram (a young mathematician of Indian origin who is beginning a Princeton PhD) recently proved that the Burau representation of the braid group is faithful for n = 4. This resolved a decades-old (roughly 90-year) open case in braid and knot theory and low-dimensional topology that had defeated and humbled the giants.

Nonagenarian Birman’s email reply to the younger Vasudha—and her later guidance of her protégé’s mathematical path—forms a female parallel to G. H. Hardy’s response to a letter from the largely self-taught Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Mathematical longevity doesn’t stop at forty or even sixty; you can still be mathematically active and productive long after you’ve retired from formal employment.

For most of us who don’t have what it takes to crack a long-unsolved topological nut or untie a stubborn topology knot, we can still mentor a young man or woman who is often stifled or bored by canned school math.

Collaboratively yours

© Yan Kow Cheong, September 13, 2026