APRIL 1st - Your Favorite Joke(s) about Mathematics/Mathematicians?

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).

7 8 9

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:

These are my favorites:

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.

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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_...

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?"

A physicist, an engineer, and a mathematician are all given a red ball.

The mathematician measures the ball to calculate its density.

The physicist puts the ball in a glass of water to figure out how much water its displaces.

The engineer reads the serial code.

Noah checked the animals in the ark, all of them were multiplying but for the snakes. He asked them what was wrong and they said they needed something: that he would built some wooden tables.

After a while, Noah checked again and all was OK. So, he asked them: "Why did you need these tables?". They replied: "We are adders, we need log tables to multiply"

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Once I got this quote on an email:

“Students nowadays are so clueless", the math professor complains to a colleague. "Yesterday, a student came to my office hours and wanted to know if General Calculus was a Roman war hero..."

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I already told you this one but I think it's good. So, I'll post it here.

An engineer, a Physics professor and a mathematician travel by train. The engineer says, after seen a black sheep:

- Sheep are black in Scotland

The Physics professor says:

- You can only state that some sheep are balck in Scotland

And the mathematician says:

- You can only state that there is at least a sheep that has at least one black side.

The matematician someone describes (the one that asks for paper and pencil) sound exactly like me!

A math teacher was giving a class in Calculus, when one of the students raised his hand and said "Teacher, please, I didn't understand this integral." The teacher said a friendly OK and went on. Some minutes later the same student raised his hand again and said "Teacher, I didn't understand that integral". Once more the teacher said a friendly OK and went on with his class. Then, the student got up and said angrily "Teacher, come on, I've told you twice that I didn't undestand that integral. Could you please explain?" And the teacher answered, "Well, I know you didn't understand it, that is clear. But you hadn't asked me to explain. So, from a logical point of view, I didn't know you wanted an explanation until you said explicitly you wanted it".

And he finally explained the integral to the student.

I was told this really happened in an British college, not sure if this is a joke or was for real.

Poster on physics-research lab door states,

In huge numerals:

2 + 2 = 3

(below in fine print)

For sufficiently small values of 2.

Here it is:

http://www.jokesy.com/images/math-jokes-find-x-her...

I liked Einstein's sense of humor, because he communicated in such a way that he could appeal to persons not extremely familiar with mathematics and science, as well as those who were. That took a special type of genius with language and diplomacy. He could often convince persons to understand his point of view by making a joke about the subject. It matters little to be one of the most intelligent persons who ever lived, but have no ability to communicate ideas and concepts in a way that others can understand. Einstein's humor, even in the way he dressed and wore his hair, helped promote and advertise himself and his ideas.