math jokes
Two math professors are sitting in a pub. "Isn't it disgusting", the first one complains, "how little the general public knows about mathematics?" "Well", his colleague replies, "you're perhaps a bit too pessimistic." "I don't think so", the first one replies. "And anyhow, I have to go to the washroom now." He goes off, and the other professor decides to use this opportunity to play a prank on his colleague. He makes a sign to the pretty, blonde waitress to come over. "When my friend comes back, I'll wave you over to our table, and I'll ask you a question. I would like you to answer: x to the third over three. Can you do that?" "Sure." The girl giggles and repeats several times: "x to the third over three, x to the third over three, x to the third over three..." When the first professor comes back from the washroom, his colleague says: "I still think, you're way too pessimistic. I'm sure the waitress knows a lot more about mathematics than you imagine." He makes her come over and asks her: "Can you tell us what the integral of x squared is?" She replies: "x to the third over three." The other professor's mouth drops wide open, and his colleague grins smugly when the waitress adds: "...plus C."
Two men are sitting in the basket of a balloon. For hours, they have been drifting through a thick layer of clouds, and they have lost orientation completely. Suddenly, the clouds part, and the two men see the top of a mountain with a man standing on it. "Hey! Can you tell us where we are?!" The man doesn't reply. The minutes pass as the balloon drifts past the mountain. When the balloon is about to be swallowed again by the clouds, the man on the mountain shouts: "You're in a balloon!" "That must have been a mathematician." "Why?" "He thought long and thoroughly about what to say. What he eventually said was irrefutably correct. And it was of no use whatsoever..."
In a dark, narrow alley, a function and a differential operator meet: "Get out of my way - or I'll differentiate you till you're zero!" "Try it - I'm e^x..."
A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are asked to test the following hypothesis: All odd numbers greater than one are prime. The mathematician: "Three is a prime, five is a prime, seven is a prime, but nine is not a prime. Therefore, the hypothesis is false." The physicist: "Three is a prime, five is a prime, seven is a prime, nine is not a prime, eleven is a prime, and thirteen is a prime. Hence, five out of six experiments support the hypothesis. It must be true." The engineer: "Three is a prime, five's a prime, seven's a prime, nine's a prime…"
Two men are having a good time in a bar. Outside, there's a terrible thunderstorm. Finally, one of the men thinks that it's time to leave. Since he has drunk a lot, he decides to walk home. "But aren't you afraid of being struck by lightning?" his friend asks. "Not at all. Statistics shows that, in this part of the country, one person per year gets struck by lightning - and that one person died in the hospital three weeks ago."
Q: Was ist paradox an der Analysis? A: Man faltet, um zu glätten...
A mathematician has spent years trying to prove the Riemann hypothesis - without success. Finally, he decides to sell his soul to the devil in exchange for a proof. The devil promises to deliver a proof within four weeks. Four weeks pass, but nothing happens. Half a year later, the devil shows up again - in a rather gloomy mood. "I'm sorry", he says. "I couldn't prove the Riemann hypothesis either. But" - and his face lightens up - "I think I found a really interesting lemma..."
Q: What is a topologist? A: A person who cannot tell a doughnut from a coffee mug.
A physicist, a mathematician and a computer scientist discuss what is better: a wife or a girlfriend. The physicist: "A girlfriend. You still have freedom to experiment." The mathematician: "A wife. You have security." The computer scientist: "Both. When I'm not with my wife, she thinks I'm with my girlfriend. With my girlfriend it's vice versa. And I can be with my computer without anyone disturbing me..."
A math student and a computer science student are jogging together in a park when they hear a voice: "Please, help me!" They stop and look. The voice belongs to a frog sitting in the grass. "Please, help me!" the frog repeats. "I'm not really a frog: I'm an enchanted, beautiful princess. Kiss me, and the spell will be broken - and I will be yours forever..." The CS student picks up the frog and examines it carefully from all sides - making not even an attempt to kiss it. "You don't have to marry me", the frog continues frantically, "if you're afraid of the commitment. I'll do whatever you wish me to do if you just kiss me..." The frog's voice is silenced, when the CS student puts the animal into the right pocket of his pants. "But why don't you kiss her?!" the math student asks. "You know", the CS student replies, "I simply don't have time for a girlfriend - but a frog that talks makes a really cool pet..."
A mathematician has been invited to speak at a conference. His talk is announced as: Proof of the Riemann hypothesis. When the conference actually takes place, he speaks about something completely different. After his talk, a colleague asks him: "Did you find an error in your proof?" He replies: "No - I never had one." "But why did you make this announcement?" "That's my standard precaution - in case I die on my way to the conference..."
At a conference, a mathematician proves a theorem. Someone in the audience interrupts him: "That proof must be wrong - I have a counterexample to your theorem." The speaker replies: "I don't care - I have another proof for it."
A graduate student of mathematics who used to come to the university on foot every day arrives one day on a fancy new bicycle. "Where did you get the bike from?" his friends want to know. "It's a 'thank you' present", he explains, "from that freshman girl I've been tutoring. But the story is kind of weird..." "Tell us!" "Well", he starts, "yesterday she called me on the phone and told me that she had passed her math final and that she wanted to drop by to thank me in person. As usual, she arrived at my place riding her bicycle. But when I had let her in, she suddenly took all her clothes off, lay down on my bed, smiled at me, and said: `You can get from me whatever you desire!'" One of his friends remarks: "You made a really smart choice when you took the bicycle." "Yeah", another friend adds, "just imagine how silly you would have looked in a girl's clothes - and they wouldn't have fit you anyway!"
"The number you have dialed is imaginary. Please, rotate your phone by 90 degrees and try again..."
A physics professor has been conducting experiments and has worked out a set of equations which seem to explain his data. Nevertheless, he is unsure if his equations are really correct and therefore asks a colleague from the math department to check them. A week later, the math professor calls him: "I'm sorry, but your equations are complete nonsense." The physics professor is, of course, disappointed. Strangely, however, his incorrect equations turn out to be surprisingly accurate in predicting the results of further experiments. So, he asks the mathematician if he was sure about the equations being completely wrong. "Well", the mathematician replies, "they are not actually complete nonsense. But the only case in which they are true is the trivial one where the field is Archimedean..."
A logician at Safeway. "Paper or plastic?" "Not 'not paper and not plastic'!"
Q: How can you tell that a mathematician is extroverted? A: When talking to you, he looks at your shoes instead of at his.
Do you know that 87.166253% of all statistics claim a precision of results that is not justified by the method employed?
"Divide fourteen sugar cubes into three cups of coffee so that each cup has an odd number of sugar cubes in it." "That's easy: one, one, and twelve." "But twelve isn't odd!" "It's an odd number of cubes to put in a cup of coffee..."
When the logician's little son refused again to eat his vegetables for dinner, the father threatened him: "If you don't eat your vegies, you won't get any ice-cream!" The son, frightened at the prospect of not having his favorite dessert, quickly finished his vegetables. After dinner, impressed that his son had eaten all his vegetables, the father sent his son to bed without any ice-cream...
Q: How do you call the largest accumulation point of poles? A: Warsaw!
Q: What is sour, yellow, and equivalent to the axiom of choice... A: Zorn's lemon...
Statistics Canada is hiring mathematicians. Three recent graduates are invited for an interview: one has a degree in pure mathematics, another one in applied math, and the third one obtained his B.Sc. in statistics. All three are asked the same question: "What is one third plus two thirds?" The pure mathematician: "It's one." The applied mathematician takes out his pocket calculator, punches in the numbers, and replies: "It's 0.999999999." The statistician: "What do you want it to be?"
An investment firm is hiring mathematicians. After the first round of interviews, three hopeful recent graduates - a pure mathematician, an applied mathematician, and a graduate in mathematical finance - are asked what starting salary they are expecting. The pure mathematician: "Would $30,000 be too much?" The applied mathematician: "I think $60,000 would be OK." The math finance person: "What about $300,000?" The personnel officer is flabberghasted: "Do you know that we have a graduate in pure mathematics who is willing to do the same work for a tenth of what you are demanding!?" "Well, I thought of $135,000 for me, $135,000 for you - and $30,000 for the pure mathematician who will do the work."
An American mathematician returns home from a conference in Moscow on real and complex analysis. The immigration officer at the airport glances at his landing card and says: "So, your trip to Russia was business related. What's the nature of your business?" "I am a professor of mathematics." "What kind of mathematics are you doing?" The professor ponders for a split second, trying to come up with something that would sound specific enough without making the immigration officer suspicious, and replies: "I am an analyst." The immigration officer nods with approval: "I think it's great that guys like you go to Russia to help those poor ex-commies to get their stock market on its feet..."
A newlywed husband is discouraged by his wife's obsession with mathematics. Afraid of being second fiddle to her profession, he finally confronts her: "Do you love math more than me?" "Of course not, dear - I love you much more!" Happy, although sceptical, he challenges her: "Well, then prove it!" Pondering a bit, she responds: "Ok... Let epsilon be greater than zero..."
A mathematician and his best friend, an engineer, attend a public lecture on geometry in thirteen-dimensional space. "How did you like it?" the mathematician wants to know after the talk. "My head's spinning", the engineer confesses. "How can you develop any intuition for thirteen-dimensional space?" "Well, it's not even difficult. All I do is visualize the situation in arbitrary N-dimensional space and then set N = 13."
The math professor just accepted a new position at a university in another city and has to move. He and his wife pack all their belongings into cardboard boxes and have them shipped off to their new home. To sort out some family matters, the wife stays behind for a few more days while her husband has already left for their new residence. The boxes arrive when the wife still hasn't rejoined her husband. When they talk on the phone in the evening, she asks him to count the boxes, just to make sure the movers didn't loose any of them. "Thirty nine boxes altogether", says the prof on the phone. "That can't be", the wife exclaims. "The movers picked up forty boxes at our old place." The prof counts once again, but again his count only reaches 39. The next morning, the wife calls the moving company and complains. The company promises to check; a few hours later, someone calls back and reports that all forty boxes did arrive. In the evening, when the prof and his wife are on the phone again, she asks: "I don't understand it. When you count, you get 39, and when they do, they get 40. That's more than strange..." "Well", the prof says. "This is a cordless phone, so you can stay on the line and count with me: zero, one, two, three,..."
Life is complex: it has both real and imaginary components.
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...
An infinite crowd of mathematicians enters a bar. The first one orders a pint, the second one a half pint, the third one a quarter pint... "I understand", says the bartender - and pours two pints.
An engineer is working at his desk in his office. His cigarette falls off the desk into the wastebasket, causing the papers within to burst into flames. The engineer looks around, sees a fire extinguisher, grabs it, puts out the flames, and goes back to work. A physicist is working at his desk in another office and the same thing happens. He looks at the fire, looks at the fire extinguisher, and thinks "Fire requires fuel plus oxygen plus heat. The fire extinguisher will remove both the oxygen and the heat in the wastebasket. Ergo, no fire." He grabs the extinguisher, puts out the flames, and goes back to work. A mathematician is working at his desk in another office and the same thing happens. He looks at the fire, looks at the fire extinguisher, and thinks for a minute, says "Ah! A solution exists!" and goes back to work.
A mathematician and an engineer are sitting at a table drinking when a very beautiful woman walks in and sits down at the bar. The mathematician sighs. "I'd like to talk to her, but first I have to cover half the distance between where we are and where she is, then half of the distance that remains, then half of that distance, and so on. The series is infinite. There'll always be some finite distance between us." The engineer gets up and starts walking. "Ah, well, I figure I can get close enough for all practical purposes."
A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are riding a train through Scotland. The engineer looks out the window, sees a black sheep, and exclaims, "Hey! They've got black sheep in Scotland!" The physicist looks out the window and corrects the engineer, "Strictly speaking, all we know is that there's at least one black sheep in Scotland." The mathematician looks out the window and corrects the physicist, "Strictly speaking, all we know is that is that at least one side of one sheep is black in Scotland."
After taking a course in mathematical physics, I wanted to know the real difference between Mathematics and Physicists. A professor friend told me "A Physicist is someone who averages the first 3 terms of a divergent series"
An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt already heard. After some observations and rough calculations the engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing. A few minutes later the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper. This leaves the mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of humour from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.
What's the shortest math joke? Let epsilon < 0.
A wealthy land owner decided to pit a farmer, an engineer, a physicist and a mathematician against each other in a competition where each was given a mile of fence and five hours to work on a very large piece of his property, and whoever could enclose the largest area with the mile of fence provided would win ten dollars per square foot of that area.
The farmer divided by four, carefully plotted out a nice clean square, and had a quarter of a square mile enclosed within a half hour.
The engineer divided the mile by 2*pi, cut a length of rope that long, tied one end in the ground and managed to assemble the fence around a circular plot of land in less than two hours.
The physicist found a nice lumpy hill about a mile in circumference with plenty of surface area, and four hours of hiking later had it enclosed with the fence.
At the 4:45 mark, the farmer, engineer and physicist show their plots to the land owner and go looking for the mathematician, who to their surprise was sitting under a tree, reading a book, with the fencing untidily staked into the ground (but with the ends connected) in a loop that still showed warps from having been rolled up.
"Is that all you can do?" they ask. "That space doesn't even come close to an acre!"
"No, you're wrong," the mathematician replied, "because that's the outside."
