"From a Distance"

lyric copyright 1998 Lawrence Mark Lesser ; all rights reserved
(may be sung to the tune of Julie Gold’s "From a Distance”)

From a distance, some features of a graph are easier to see.
From a distance, a polynomial’s path is more clear to me.
From a distance, there's a big picture containing all we need-
Like all the roots and all the turns somewhere on the screen.
 
But from a distance, some things about a graph are harder to see.
From a distance, two roots back to back could look like one to me!
From a distance, finding what's interesting is hard to do precisely,
But zooming in, we'll scan the screen close enough to see.
 
We are zooming in, we are zooming out,
As we try to find the right distance.
 
Now from a distance, some curves look the same as they do when we are close.
From a distance, some patterns repeat along a cloud or coast.
From a distance there is similarity, and it echoes at ev’ry scale;
Let's find what makes those Koch snowflakes and take the fractal trail!