APRIL 1st - Your Favorite Joke(s) about Mathematics/Mathematicians?
Here are some: http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~runde/jokes.html Feel free to submit more as many as you wish!
2011-04-01T05:39:37Z
Four nice answers so far, keep the good work going, everybody! To Mathsmanretired: I am sure You have more to submit! To Scythian: Yes, Bertrand Russel's half-year imprisonment in Brixton Prison is a famous example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell#First_World_War There is a similar one in the 1st link above: "Q: What is the difference between a mathematician and a philosopher? A: The mathematician only needs paper, pencil, and a trash bin for his work - the philosopher can do without the trash bin."
And a related question: of all famous mathematicians who has had the sharpest sense of humor in your opinion and why?
2011-04-03T01:25:05Z
Isn't it beautiful we have a day in the year when we can afford not to be serious? So many great answers in 2 days, thanks to you all! And many of them are submitted along with our distinguished Contributors by new members, who have joined Y!A Community very recently, what is the most delightful! It will be hard for me to choose a Best Answer, I'll think it over again, but this may turn out my first question to be sent to public vote - for the time being I am extending the expiration time, hoping yet for more!
2011-04-08T06:17:36Z
The time is about to expire and in my opinion this question should be decided by the Y!A Community, I am sending it to vote. MANY THANKS TO ALL AGAIN!
Steiner2011-04-01T06:05:21Z
Favorite Answer
A mathematician wanted to know how many pencils there were in a drawer in his office. So, he asked his secretary
"Mrs Mary, please, set up a bijection between the set of pencils in that drawer and an initial segment of the positive integers".
And Mrs Mary replied:
"Not sure I can do this, sir. First, you have to prove the set of pencils is finite."
A mathematician told his kids the story of Snow White and the 7 dwarfs. He started like that:
"Let SW be a girl called Snow White and let d_i, i ∈ {1,2,3....7}, be each of the seven dwarfs."
A mathematician had a really bad time with a renal calculus. When he finally got rid of it, he said in joy "Ah, My calculus was integrated for several months, but I could finally differentiate it!"
And as a engineer that loves math, I say that life is an integration of ideas (nort exactly a joke).
A mathematician is someone that, when shown a small, sparse jail cell that he'll have to be spending the next few years in, will say, "yes, but will I have a pen and some paper?"
There are a few jokes about John von Neumann's ability to do things in his head. One of them runs something like this: At an university, a student asks von Neumann's help in figuring out how to work out a definite integral. Neumann, looking over the definite integral, mutters, "Let's see, um, that works out to two over pi." The student says, "Yes, but I'm not really understanding this..." Neumann looks at the problem again, thinks about it a bit, and says, "Yes, that's right, it's two over pi." The student says, "Actually, I was asking for the method how you arrived at that figure." Neumann says, "What do you want? I just figured it out in two different ways!"
While there are plenty of jokes about famous mathematicians, I think it's Paul Erdos that had the some of the saltiest views of what it was to be a mathematician. A famous quote by him, "A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems" reflects that, but it turns out that he picked that up from others. But this is Erdo's own: "There are three signs of senility. The first sign is that a man forgets his theorems. The second sign is that he forgets to zip up. The third sign is that he forgets to zip down." He did live a long time, productive in mathematics to the very end.
Edit: While we think of Richard Feynman as a physicist, he was also a terrific mathematician, so I thought I'd include a true funny story about him. One time when he was having dinner with friends at Chinatown, a shell game con man offered him a chance to win a bet. Feynman accepted, and the con man went through his routine of shuffling around the shells, and asked Feynman to pick. Feynman said, "Well, what I know is where the pea is not, it's not under this shell and it's not under that shell. Am I right?" The con man was forced to admit that Feynman was perfectly correct, and lost the bet to him. Feynman also had a terrific sense of humor.
Edit 2: And let's not forget this test answer classic, see link:
A doctor says it's better to have a wife than a mistress, because the stability of marriage promotes health and a long life.
A lawyer says it's better to have a mistress than a wife because you don't have to mess with the whole process of divorce if you want to break up.
A mathematician says you should have both. Each of them will think you are spending time with the other, meanwhile, you can go to the office and do some mathematics.
- - -
Proofs that all odd numbers are prime:
Mathematician: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, ... by induction, all odd numbers are prime. Physicist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime 7 is prime, (experimental error), 11 is prime, ... all odd numbers are prime. Engineer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime, 11 is prime .... all odd numbers are prime. Computer Programmer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 7 is prime, 7 is prime, 7 ....
And a whole collection of funny math (and other) test answers found on many sites, for example: http://blog.jimmyr.com/Funny_student_Exam_Answers_13_2008.php
I love "find x" ... "It's right here!" and the calculation that ends up as a big blob of ink, followed by a body hanging from a noose.
1. Three red indian women go to the witch doctor. Each says that although married for a year there is no sign of a baby. The witch doctor says to the first, "Get your husband to kill a mountain lion and sleep on its skin". To the second he says, "Get your husband to kill a bison and sleep on its skin." To the third he says, "Get your husband to kill a hippopotamus and sleep on its skin."
Within a year all had healthy children, the first a son, the second a daughter, and the third had twins, boy and girl. They went back to see the witch doctor and said, "We are very grateful for your advice but why has the third got twins."
The witch doctor replied, "Great chief Pythagoras, him say, the squaw on the hyppopotamuse is the sum of the squaws on the other two hides."
2. Rene Descartes was drinking in a bar one evening. After a while he decided to to leave, but as he got up the bartender asked if he wanted one for the road. Descartes said, "I think not", and promptly disappeared in a flash of lightning.
3. Two young male mathematicians are walking down the street when they are passed by a rather shapely young woman. One says to the other, "What did you say was the equation for paraboloids."
4. Like the answer from Helen below, this is more an anecdote than a joke. A student was attending her first mathematics class at university. The lecturer asked if she would start by marking with chalk the point of inflection on the diagram. She replied, "Sir, I would love to, but the point has no size. Any mark I make with the chalk will have a finite size and so be inappropriate. I hope that's not disrespectful" The lecturer then said, "No, no, you and I are going to get on just fine."
5. Another anecdote. A teacher from a comprehensive school was visiting Oxford university. One professor said to him, "I understand that in your school you have students of all abilities." "Yes", the teacher replied. Prof then said, "Well, that must be difficult. How on earth do you cope with students who can only get one A level?"