5 ms·

Tom Lehrer's Mathematical Songs (1951)

79 points by jelliclesfarm 6y ago

neiman 6y ago
The man was doing stuff that would have "broken the Internet", years before the Internet even existed.
sasaf5 6y ago
From the title I thought he generated melodies with math. Instead, he wrote songs about math.
abalaji 6y ago
My favorite from the list: https://youtu.be/UQHaGhC7C2E https://youtu.be/UQHaGhC7C2E
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  A scan of Lobachevsky's work, as republished in western languages: http://books.e-heritage.ru/book/10070448 http://books.e-heritage.ru/book/10070448 Lehrer's technique here was a common Cold War trope: one daren't mention any second-world achievements directly in english works, but cloaked in enough pejoratives they'd slip past the censorship of the crowd, while people who could evaluate for themselves did. Looks like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobachevsky_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobachevsky_Prize has suffered some endo-mathematical drama recently. - the inspirational Danny Kaye sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXI2djKeerQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXI2djKeerQ - and, lest anyone worry about the exhaustivity of my case analysis, Bergman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIk_A115Src https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIk_A115Src ("the squaw of the hippopotamus")
- janlaureys 6y ago
  Last week there was that opponent of Putin who got poisoned and was sent to a hospital in Omsk and I was like: "Why do I know the name of that random Russian city ?".
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    Omsk is one of the largest cities in Siberia, and apparently 7th largest in all of Russia. Tomsk is the small city in that song, as it was bypassed by the Trans-Siberian Railway in favor of Novosibirsk.
  - vmilner 6y ago
    Omsk (and Tomsk) are wombles...
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
doesn't have New Math https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA growing up we had two Tom Lehrer albums (I guess my parents had their good points)
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  That was the first thing I noticed. I guess it’s the New New Math now. I wonder what he’d have felt about Common Core.
polytely 6y ago
My favourite is Wernher Von Braun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio
- lqet 6y ago
  Don't say that he's hypocritical, Say rather that he's apolitical. "Once ze rockets are up, who cares where zey come down? That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.
  - dekhn 6y ago
    (which is technically incorrect, because he cared very much for targeting accuracy).
- AndrewStephens 6y ago
  My favourite as well. So harsh, but so fair.
- knolax 6y ago
  Whether Von Braun was Nazi or not the fake German accent is a little distasteful.
  - JadeNB 6y ago
    It was recorded in the '60s, and I think one can probably make one allowance for different tolerances more than 5 decades later.
  - polytely 6y ago
    Honestly I don't think there is anything wrong with doing fake accents for the purpose of satire (as long as you are punching up, not down).
  - bloak 6y ago
    What do you think of his fake Russian accent in "Lobachevsky"? I think it's great. And isn't there a fake Irish accent in one of his songs?
beagle3 6y ago
Tom Lehrer is incredibly witty and funny; he was a mathematician and performer who was active in the 1960's until the 1980's. Some of his stuff is a little dated but most of it is as relevant as ever. I found three albums of his - "That was the year that was", "An evening wasted with Tom Lehrer" and "Antoher evening wasted". They cover the more famous parts of his repertoire, and for the rest you'll likely have to look through YouTube and the internet. Highly recommended.
- dcminter 6y ago
  If you like Tom Lehrer then you might also enjoy his British contemporaries Flanders & Swann in "At the drop of a hat" and other albums. With rare exceptions ("The laws of thermodynamics") they didn't write about the sciences, but they were musically a bit more sophisticated and just as witty. Their satire was far less biting but was present. Although Michael Flanders did monologue: "The purpose of Satire, it has been rightly said, is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half-truth - and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again." :) I recommend their delightful animal song "The Sloth" as having pertinence to my fellows in the HN audience who have trouble with procrastination... Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blDNO5qznjM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blDNO5qznjM
  - ghaff 6y ago
    On PBS in the US, Mark Russell was also in a similar vein--but mostly political and IMO not as good. Doesn't seem to be readily available.
  - AndrewStephens 6y ago
    On the topic of Flanders and Swann, their song about a gnu[0] (using the then non-standard pronunciation) was one of the inspirations for the naming the GNU project. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwJ4iKv0H70&list=OLAK5uy_m5zHSJOc2ma2npAbpM1ZeNJpu7w0dU7-0&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwJ4iKv0H70&list=OLAK5uy_m5z...
    - dcminter 6y ago
rm445 6y ago
I love Tom Lehrer, but I was a little taken aback when I learnt that Lobachevsky was a real mathematician and not as far as anyone knows a plagiarist. Seems harsh to skewer a (long-dead) guy's reputation with such a catchy song.
- etiam 6y ago
  Yeah, that one took me a quite while to realize as well. As far as I now understand, Lobachevsky was a truly great mathematician and any accusations of plagiarism absolutely unfounded. Lehrer simply chose him because the name went well with the Danny Kaye song "Stanislawsky" which he was paraphrasing. Apparently Lobachevsky's relatives were, understandably, not at all happy with the implications. It's the one occasion I can think of where I feel Tom Lehrer's satire was truly misdirected. One of many reasons I appreciate him so much is otherwise that when the sharp wit was at someone's expense, they had earned it (and this in contrast to the practice with most contemporary purported comedians, at least in my country).
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Over 2'000 years to resolve an open question (Elements, ca. -300 → On the Origin of Geometry, 1829) is a considerable time. http://www.claymath.org/euclid/index/book-1-postulates http://www.claymath.org/euclid/index/book-1-postulates (the image is clickable, but it's all greek to me) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_postulate#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_postulate#History I think Lehrer was counting on both the Danny Kaye reference and his prosody statement to hint at where this song stands with respect to Poe's Law: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24281288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24281288
Tempest1981 6y ago
He taught at UC Santa Cruz from 1972 to 2001. I wonder what his classes were like. Anyone happen to attend? https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03922-x https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03922-x
- dekhn 6y ago
  yes, I took "Nature of Math". Wonderful course and his delivery was excellent. I almost ended up being the TA the next quarter. It was my introduction to many things, including birthday paradox and analytic solutions for tertiary equations.
polytely 6y ago
There is a really cool article by buzzfeed of all places detailing Lehrer's career: https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  What next, a Teen Vogue piece on non-euclidean geometry?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lippel82 6y ago
Why does it say (1951) in the title? The article says "Last Updated October 2013" and talks about songs that were published in the seventies.
nayuki 6y ago
The first work of Tom Lehrer's that I heard is "The Elements", where he recites chemical element names. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_(song) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_(song) ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcS3NOQnsQM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcS3NOQnsQM
jedimastert 6y ago
I occupy an interesting intersection in that I went to school for math and science (BS in CS, did math and computational chemistry research) and I also used to play and sing in a piano bar (often in the same night!) Every once in a while I'd pull out a Tom Lehrer tune, but you really need the right audience for it. Fun fact: Tom Lehrer and Steven Sondheim were childhood friends.
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
At least two kid friendly songs: https://youtu.be/91BQqdNOUxs https://youtu.be/91BQqdNOUxs : Silent E https://youtu.be/dB2Ff8H7oVo https://youtu.be/dB2Ff8H7oVo : LY
- jelliclesfarm 6y ago
  +1 ‘That’s Mathematics’: https://youtu.be/y7VQFfusQJk https://youtu.be/y7VQFfusQJk

79 points by jelliclesfarm 6y ago

neiman 6y ago

The man was doing stuff that would have "broken the Internet", years before the Internet even existed.

sasaf5 6y ago

From the title I thought he generated melodies with math. Instead, he wrote songs about math.

abalaji 6y ago

My favorite from the list: https://youtu.be/UQHaGhC7C2E https://youtu.be/UQHaGhC7C2E

082349872349872 6y ago
A scan of Lobachevsky's work, as republished in western languages: http://books.e-heritage.ru/book/10070448 http://books.e-heritage.ru/book/10070448 Lehrer's technique here was a common Cold War trope: one daren't mention any second-world achievements directly in english works, but cloaked in enough pejoratives they'd slip past the censorship of the crowd, while people who could evaluate for themselves did. Looks like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobachevsky_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobachevsky_Prize has suffered some endo-mathematical drama recently. - the inspirational Danny Kaye sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXI2djKeerQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXI2djKeerQ - and, lest anyone worry about the exhaustivity of my case analysis, Bergman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIk_A115Src https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIk_A115Src ("the squaw of the hippopotamus")
janlaureys 6y ago
Last week there was that opponent of Putin who got poisoned and was sent to a hospital in Omsk and I was like: "Why do I know the name of that random Russian city ?".
- jcranmer 6y ago
  Omsk is one of the largest cities in Siberia, and apparently 7th largest in all of Russia. Tomsk is the small city in that song, as it was bypassed by the Trans-Siberian Railway in favor of Novosibirsk.
- vmilner 6y ago
  Omsk (and Tomsk) are wombles...

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

doesn't have New Math https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA growing up we had two Tom Lehrer albums (I guess my parents had their good points)

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
That was the first thing I noticed. I guess it’s the New New Math now. I wonder what he’d have felt about Common Core.

polytely 6y ago

My favourite is Wernher Von Braun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio

lqet 6y ago
Don't say that he's hypocritical, Say rather that he's apolitical. "Once ze rockets are up, who cares where zey come down? That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.
- dekhn 6y ago
  (which is technically incorrect, because he cared very much for targeting accuracy).
AndrewStephens 6y ago
My favourite as well. So harsh, but so fair.
knolax 6y ago
Whether Von Braun was Nazi or not the fake German accent is a little distasteful.
- JadeNB 6y ago
  It was recorded in the '60s, and I think one can probably make one allowance for different tolerances more than 5 decades later.
- polytely 6y ago
  Honestly I don't think there is anything wrong with doing fake accents for the purpose of satire (as long as you are punching up, not down).
- bloak 6y ago
  What do you think of his fake Russian accent in "Lobachevsky"? I think it's great. And isn't there a fake Irish accent in one of his songs?

beagle3 6y ago

Tom Lehrer is incredibly witty and funny; he was a mathematician and performer who was active in the 1960's until the 1980's. Some of his stuff is a little dated but most of it is as relevant as ever. I found three albums of his - "That was the year that was", "An evening wasted with Tom Lehrer" and "Antoher evening wasted". They cover the more famous parts of his repertoire, and for the rest you'll likely have to look through YouTube and the internet. Highly recommended.

dcminter 6y ago
If you like Tom Lehrer then you might also enjoy his British contemporaries Flanders & Swann in "At the drop of a hat" and other albums. With rare exceptions ("The laws of thermodynamics") they didn't write about the sciences, but they were musically a bit more sophisticated and just as witty. Their satire was far less biting but was present. Although Michael Flanders did monologue: "The purpose of Satire, it has been rightly said, is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half-truth - and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again." :) I recommend their delightful animal song "The Sloth" as having pertinence to my fellows in the HN audience who have trouble with procrastination... Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blDNO5qznjM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blDNO5qznjM
- ghaff 6y ago
  On PBS in the US, Mark Russell was also in a similar vein--but mostly political and IMO not as good. Doesn't seem to be readily available.
- AndrewStephens 6y ago
  On the topic of Flanders and Swann, their song about a gnu[0] (using the then non-standard pronunciation) was one of the inspirations for the naming the GNU project. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwJ4iKv0H70&list=OLAK5uy_m5zHSJOc2ma2npAbpM1ZeNJpu7w0dU7-0&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwJ4iKv0H70&list=OLAK5uy_m5z...
  - dcminter 6y ago

rm445 6y ago

I love Tom Lehrer, but I was a little taken aback when I learnt that Lobachevsky was a real mathematician and not as far as anyone knows a plagiarist. Seems harsh to skewer a (long-dead) guy's reputation with such a catchy song.

etiam 6y ago
Yeah, that one took me a quite while to realize as well. As far as I now understand, Lobachevsky was a truly great mathematician and any accusations of plagiarism absolutely unfounded. Lehrer simply chose him because the name went well with the Danny Kaye song "Stanislawsky" which he was paraphrasing. Apparently Lobachevsky's relatives were, understandably, not at all happy with the implications. It's the one occasion I can think of where I feel Tom Lehrer's satire was truly misdirected. One of many reasons I appreciate him so much is otherwise that when the sharp wit was at someone's expense, they had earned it (and this in contrast to the practice with most contemporary purported comedians, at least in my country).
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Over 2'000 years to resolve an open question (Elements, ca. -300 → On the Origin of Geometry, 1829) is a considerable time. http://www.claymath.org/euclid/index/book-1-postulates http://www.claymath.org/euclid/index/book-1-postulates (the image is clickable, but it's all greek to me) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_postulate#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_postulate#History I think Lehrer was counting on both the Danny Kaye reference and his prosody statement to hint at where this song stands with respect to Poe's Law: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24281288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24281288

Tempest1981 6y ago

He taught at UC Santa Cruz from 1972 to 2001. I wonder what his classes were like. Anyone happen to attend? https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03922-x https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03922-x

dekhn 6y ago
yes, I took "Nature of Math". Wonderful course and his delivery was excellent. I almost ended up being the TA the next quarter. It was my introduction to many things, including birthday paradox and analytic solutions for tertiary equations.

polytely 6y ago

There is a really cool article by buzzfeed of all places detailing Lehrer's career: https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer

082349872349872 6y ago
What next, a Teen Vogue piece on non-euclidean geometry?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

lippel82 6y ago

Why does it say (1951) in the title? The article says "Last Updated October 2013" and talks about songs that were published in the seventies.

nayuki 6y ago

The first work of Tom Lehrer's that I heard is "The Elements", where he recites chemical element names. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_(song) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_(song) ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcS3NOQnsQM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcS3NOQnsQM

jedimastert 6y ago

I occupy an interesting intersection in that I went to school for math and science (BS in CS, did math and computational chemistry research) and I also used to play and sing in a piano bar (often in the same night!) Every once in a while I'd pull out a Tom Lehrer tune, but you really need the right audience for it. Fun fact: Tom Lehrer and Steven Sondheim were childhood friends.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

At least two kid friendly songs: https://youtu.be/91BQqdNOUxs https://youtu.be/91BQqdNOUxs : Silent E https://youtu.be/dB2Ff8H7oVo https://youtu.be/dB2Ff8H7oVo : LY

jelliclesfarm 6y ago
+1 ‘That’s Mathematics’: https://youtu.be/y7VQFfusQJk https://youtu.be/y7VQFfusQJk