Maths Limerick

[  # 79 of My Favourite Short Poems  ]

On a slightly different tack to my usual Monday poetic offering, here is a limerick which you may have come across before, but which I think is worth giving some thought to.  As far as I know, it has to be attributed to ‘Anonymous’, but I would welcome anyone who might be able to throw more light on who it was who devised this extremely clever verse.  It is as follows:

A dozen, a gross, and a score

Plus three times the square root of four

Divided by seven

Plus five times eleven

Is nine squared and not a bit more.

 

Put in terms of a regular mathematical equation, this would appear as follows: