## Favorite math jokes

For the discussion of math. Duh.

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LenTheGr8
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2007 10:31 pm UTC
Salary Theorem
The less you know, the more you make.

Proof:
Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power.
Postulate 2: Time is Money.
As every engineer knows: Power = Work / Time
And since Knowledge = Power and Time = Money
It is therefore true that Knowledge = Work / Money .
Solving for Money, we get:
Money = Work / Knowledge
Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of Work done.

Amnesiasoft
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Joined: Tue May 15, 2007 4:28 am UTC
Contact:
LenTheGr8 wrote:Salary Theorem
The less you know, the more you make.

Proof:
Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power.
Postulate 2: Time is Money.
As every engineer knows: Power = Work / Time
And since Knowledge = Power and Time = Money
It is therefore true that Knowledge = Work / Money .
Solving for Money, we get:
Money = Work / Knowledge
Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of Work done.

And adding on to that one...

As knowledge = 1 / ignorace
If ignorance is bliss, ignorance = bliss
so money = work / (1 / bliss)
money = work * bliss.

And because money is directly proportional to happiness, money can buy happiness.

(ok, so knowledge = 1/ ignorance is slightly pushing the logic...)

genevabeagle
Posts: 42
Joined: Tue Dec 12, 2006 11:32 pm UTC
A wholly derivative (and terrible) joke:

A large hotel is packed full of engineers, mathematicians and physicists in preparation for a conference.

The night before the conference, a mathematician awakes to find his desk aflame and the room filling with smoke. He grabs his blanket to smother the flames, but has a sudden flash of insight â€” catching a stack of paper on fire, he runs up and down the hotel, depositing a lit sheet under every door. Satisfied, he pulls the fire alarm and exits.

Minutes later, the crowd is shivering outside the hotel as a half-dozen fire trucks spray down the exterior. Furious, the physicists begin to congregate around the mathematician, who is grinning broadly. "Why didn't you wake us up?" one shouts. "At least we might have isolated the singularity!"

"Or we could have formed a brigade!" chimes in an engineer, gesturing angrily at the unfazed mathematician. Drawing tighter and tighter, the engineers and physicists notice that, in fact, most of the mathematicians are either adamantly cheerful or murmuring peaceably among themselves. Livid with rage, the physicist whips his finger at the network of hoses and flashing lights, screaming "Can't you see what you've done? Why the hell are you smiling?!"

To which the mathematician replies: "Isn't it obvious? Contrary to popular opinion, generalizing the problem led to a more elegant solution!"

Marbas
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Yay metahumor!

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.

Peripatetic
Posts: 135
Joined: Fri Sep 08, 2006 8:47 am UTC
LenTheGr8 wrote:Salary Theorem
The less you know, the more you make.

Proof:
Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power.
Postulate 2: Time is Money.
As every engineer knows: Power = Work / Time
And since Knowledge = Power and Time = Money
It is therefore true that Knowledge = Work / Money .
Solving for Money, we get:
Money = Work / Knowledge
Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of Work done.

This is why Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard.

bcoblentz
Posts: 59
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2007 6:28 am UTC
Location: Davis, CA
Xial wrote:I have written a proof to prove that kids should not be required to go to school.

School=knowledge
knowledge=power
absolute(power)=absolute(corruption)

Therefore
power=corruption
knowledge=corruption
and finally
school=corruption

You see teachers are trying to debauch our children.

your proof contains a serious error on line 3.

and my lame attempt: how many mathematicians does it take to change a light bulb? none; gauss already did it.

Bondolon
Posts: 436
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Location: College Station, TX
Contact:
bcoblentz wrote:
Xial wrote:I have written a proof to prove that kids should not be required to go to school.

School=knowledge
knowledge=power
absolute(power)=absolute(corruption)

Therefore
power=corruption
knowledge=corruption
and finally
school=corruption

You see teachers are trying to debauch our children.

your proof contains a serious error on line 3.
http://purgatorio1.com/wp-content/pics/strongjesus.JPG
and my lame attempt: how many mathematicians does it take to change a light bulb? none; gauss already did it.

Two serious errors. Shoddy premise and improper notation, unless it's a computer command algorithm. Just as it would be P sub a (Power sub absolute), it should be C sub a (Corruption sub absolute). His proof only defines two types of absolution.

bcoblentz
Posts: 59
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2007 6:28 am UTC
Location: Davis, CA
eh...i don't see where he defined even one type of absolute value, or how subscript notation would be helpful at all, except to further the demonic cause of the people who like to use subscripts for everything.

Bondolon
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bcoblentz wrote:eh...i don't see where he defined even one type of absolute value, or how subscript notation would be helpful at all, except to further the demonic cause of the people who like to use subscripts for everything.

mwahahaha

antonfire
Posts: 1772
Joined: Thu Apr 05, 2007 7:31 pm UTC
Why didn't Newton discover group theory?

Because he wasn't Abel.

Why did the mathematician name his dog Cauchy?

Because he left a residue at every pole.

PainGod
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed Jun 06, 2007 8:10 pm UTC
Anything that has the mathematician exclaiming "there is a solution!" and proceeding to stop caring entirely about the problem. Alternatively, he could respond to a numerical question with something like, "some number".

Also, this is from a comic my friend writes at the UW-Madison. The first guy is supposed to be me:
http://www.yourmometer.com/?which=85

_______________________________________________________________

"What do you say we get Cauchy and integrate?"

Xial
Posts: 185
Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2007 2:01 am UTC
Location: California
My apologies for being imprecise. I meant absolute x power= absolute x corruption. I will rewrite it in proof form.

Postulate 1: School is knowledge
Postulate 2: Knowledge is power
Postulate 3: Absolute power is absolute corruption (absolute x power = absolute x corruption)

Therefore
Power=Corruption (divided by absolute)
Knowledge=Corruption (Transitive property)
School=Corruption (Transitive property)

|333173|3|_||3
Posts: 124
Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2007 9:41 am UTC
You cannot divide by absolute, since the modulus operator is precisely that, an operator. To remove the absolute, you would have to write
$power = \pm corruption$ or $\pm power = corruption$.
The voices in my head tell me that I should write something here. Unfortunately, they won't tell me what to write.

Princess Marzipan
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Joined: Sun May 27, 2007 5:28 am UTC
Location: neither a road, nor an island
A computer scientist is standing holding a pair of suitcases in an airport baggage claim area. He is looking rather confused. A traveler asks if he's having trouble finding all of his luggage.
The computer scientist says "Yes, I'm supposed to have 2 bags, but I can't find the other one."
The traveler, now himself confused, states "But they're both right there. See? One, two."
The computer scientist says "No, no, no. Zero, one..."
"It's Saturday night. I've got no date, a two-liter of Shasta, and my all-Rush mixtape. Let's rock!"
"I am just about to be brilliant!"
General_Norris, on feminism, wrote:If you lose your six Pokémon, you lost.

bcoblentz
Posts: 59
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2007 6:28 am UTC
Location: Davis, CA
Xial wrote:My apologies for being imprecise. I meant absolute x power= absolute x corruption. I will rewrite it in proof form.

Postulate 1: School is knowledge
Postulate 2: Knowledge is power
Postulate 3: Absolute power is absolute corruption (absolute x power = absolute x corruption)

Therefore
Power=Corruption (divided by absolute)
Knowledge=Corruption (Transitive property)
School=Corruption (Transitive property)

...that makes even less sense. what i've been getting at is the obvious fact that two things which have the same norm/absolute value/whatever are not necessarily equal. i think it's time you abandoned this joke.

Buttons
Posts: 858
Joined: Wed May 02, 2007 3:27 pm UTC
Location: Somerville
I think he was treating absolute as a quantity, rather than an operator. "Absolute power," like "5 hectares of swampland," is simply a measurement, so if absolute power is absolute corruption, then presumably one can divide by this "absolute" quantity (which probably isn't zero) to show that power is corruption.

That said, equation-based jokes are almost always a stretch. Although I was pretty amused a few summers ago to see homophobic bumperstickers proclaim "man + woman > man + man," or something to that effect. Adding woman â€“ man to both sides gives an interesting position for the conservative right to hold.

Hix
Posts: 364
Joined: Sun Oct 15, 2006 5:46 pm UTC
Buttons wrote:That said, equation-based jokes are almost always a stretch. Although I was pretty amused a few summers ago to see homophobic bumperstickers proclaim "man + woman > man + man," or something to that effect. Adding woman â€“ man to both sides gives an interesting position for the conservative right to hold.

And I know I've seen a bumper sticker which was presumably trying to get the same message across, but in fact, proclaims the incompatable equation "man + woman > woman + woman"

Vaniver
Posts: 9422
Joined: Fri Oct 13, 2006 2:12 am UTC
Of course, if they were cross products, it would work out perfectly.
I mostly post over at LessWrong now.

Avatar from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, owned by Hasbro.

Buttons
Posts: 858
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Location: Somerville
Vaniver wrote:Of course, if they were cross products, it would work out perfectly.

Except the Catholic church doesn't approve of any positions in which men and women aren't parallel, so you'd still have 0 > 0.

Vaniver
Posts: 9422
Joined: Fri Oct 13, 2006 2:12 am UTC
Buttons wrote:
Vaniver wrote:Of course, if they were cross products, it would work out perfectly.

Except the Catholic church doesn't approve of any positions in which men and women aren't parallel, so you'd still have 0 > 0.
Even if that is their stated position, it can hardly be considered to be true.
I mostly post over at LessWrong now.

Avatar from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, owned by Hasbro.

PatrickRsGhost
Posts: 2278
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Location: ZZ9PluralZAlpha
Contact:
I got this in my e-mail this morning. Thought some of you here might enjoy it.

"Psst, c'mere," said the shifty-eyed man wearing a long black trenchcoat, as he beckoned me off the rainy street into a damp dark alley. I followed.

"What are you selling?" I asked.

"Geometrical algebra drugs."

"Huh!?"

"Stop right there," I interrupted. "I've never heard of inside-outers."

"Oh, man, you'll love 'em. Makes you feel like M.C. ever-lovin' Escher on a particularly weird day."

"Go on..."

"OK, your inside-outers, your arbitrary bilinear mappers, and here, heh, here are the best ones," he said, pulling out a large clear bottle of orange pills.

"What are those, then?" I asked.

"Givens transformers. They'll rotate you about more planes than you even knew existed."

"Sounds gross. What about those bilinear mappers?"

"There's a whole variety of them. Here's one you'll love -- they call it 'One Over Z' on the street. Take one of these little bad boys and you'll be on speaking terms with the Point at Infinity."
PRG

An important message for you:

010000100110010100100000011100110
111010101110010011001010010000001
110100011011110010000001100101011
000010111010000100000011110010110
111101110101011100100010000001100
010011000010110001101101111011011
1000101110

Pathway
Leon Sumbitches...?
Posts: 647
Joined: Sun Oct 15, 2006 5:59 pm UTC
Xial wrote:I have written a proof to prove that kids should not be required to go to school.

School=knowledge
knowledge=power
absolute(power)=absolute(corruption)

Therefore
power=corruption
knowledge=corruption
and finally
school=corruption

You see teachers are trying to debauch our children.

Gods alive, no wonder no one else uses it: it's an incorrect proof. |power| = |corruption| does not imply power = corruption, because it's possible that for any power, power = - corruption, in which case (as well as a variety of others) power != corruption.

edit: Not that anyone else pointed it out or anything...

Oh well, I guess it's to my credit that I care about Math.
SargeZT wrote:Oh dear no, I love penguins. They're my favorite animal ever besides cows.

The reason I would kill penguins would be, no one ever, ever fucking kills penguins.

aguacate
Posts: 209
Joined: Fri Feb 16, 2007 10:29 pm UTC
Pathway wrote:power = - corruption, in which case (as well as a variety of others) power != corruption.

What other cases?

sillybear25
civilized syllabub
Posts: 435
Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2007 2:19 am UTC
Location: Look at me, I'm putting a meta-joke in the Location field.
I didn't read them all, so I don't know if this one is here or not, but here goes:

Why weren't sin and tan invited to the trig party?

Just cos.
This space intentionally left blank.

Pathway
Leon Sumbitches...?
Posts: 647
Joined: Sun Oct 15, 2006 5:59 pm UTC
aguacate wrote:
Pathway wrote:power = - corruption, in which case (as well as a variety of others) power != corruption.

What other cases?

power = - corruption if |corruption| < .5, power = corruption otherwise, for example. figure out more yourself.
SargeZT wrote:Oh dear no, I love penguins. They're my favorite animal ever besides cows.

The reason I would kill penguins would be, no one ever, ever fucking kills penguins.

Xial
Posts: 185
Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2007 2:01 am UTC
Location: California
I was using absolute as a value not as modulus. i.e. absolute(power)=absolute x power; not sqrt((power^2)).

LenTheGr8
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Jun 14, 2007 10:31 pm UTC
Abbott & Costello: 13 x 7 equals 28

Nimblefinger
Posts: 58
Joined: Sun Jul 01, 2007 7:00 pm UTC
Location: Cambridge
Rene Descartes walks into a bar. The barman says 'May I help you sir?', Descartes replies 'I think not.' and promptly vanishes.

Still amuses me, can't remember where I first heard it, but I think its on komplexify.

Buttons
Posts: 858
Joined: Wed May 02, 2007 3:27 pm UTC
Location: Somerville
Nimblefinger wrote:Rene Descartes walks into a bar. The barman says 'May I help you sir?', Descartes replies 'I think not.' and promptly vanishes.

I guess he was wearing Converse All-Stars.

bonder
Posts: 168
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Contact:
i^ and k^ (meaning i hat and k hat) go to a party in the xy-plane. They wait in line for a while and then they finally make it up to the bouncer and he lets k^ in, no questions asked, but he stops i^ in his tracks. i^ says "hey, what's the big deal, you let my buddy k^ in no problem!" The bouncer looks at i^ and says "son, you're not normal."

==========

A mathematician, physicist, and an engineer are asked to find the volume of a red sphere:

The mathematician looks at the sphere and then measures the circumference and then calculates the radius and uses that to calculate the volume.

The physicist looks at the sphere and then gets a graduated cylinder and fills it part way with water. He then submerges the sphere in the water and states that the volume of the sphere is equal to the displacement of the water.

The engineer takes the sphere and starts look at it all over, making sure that he sees the whole surface of the sphere. Then he pulls out a book of tables and starts flipping through it. He starts to get nervous as he nears the end of the book. When he finishes with the book, he pulls out another book of tables and keeps flipping through it. When he finishes with his second book he asks "Hey, do any of you have tables for red spheres?"

==========

I had a professor tell me this story about a professor of his when he was in grad school:

The prof is working on a proof and comes to a conclusion and says that it is obvious that it is true. One of the students asks if it really is obvious. The prof stood there silent for 5 minutes thinking and finally said "It was obvious last night."
I've never made anyone's life easier and you know it.

Jeffrey
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 6:57 pm UTC

### Re: Favorite math jokes

Zohar wrote:John and Michael are in a floating balloon above a canyon.
John turns to Michael and says "I think we're lost", so Michael leans over the canyon and shouts "CAN ANYONE HELP US? WE DON'T KNOW WHERE WE ARE!"
His shout echoes in the canyon and a few minutes later they hear "YOU'RE IN A FLOATING BALLOON ABOVE A CANYON!"
John laughs and says "That's must've been a mathematician."
"How do you know?" asked Michael.
"Simple, his answer was completely accurate and utterly useless".

The man below says: "You must be in management."

"I am," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well", says the man, "you don't know where you are, or where you're
going, but you expect me to be able to help. You're still in the same
position you were before we met, but now it's my fault."

3.14159265...
Irrational (?)
Posts: 2413
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ROFL

Awsome first post
"The best times in life are the ones when you can genuinely add a "Bwa" to your "ha""- Chris Hastings

JonMW
Posts: 57
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 8:51 am UTC
Location: Australia!
ptveite wrote:what's the integral of 1/CABIN dCABIN?

Houseboat! (logCabin + C)
I love this one. Saved it to my computer. Then I'm going to dig out my maths books and relearn the maths involved (I knew it quite well last year, but I have the habit of forgetting this kind of thing).

Jeffrey
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 6:57 pm UTC
Oh I forgot my favorite:

A mathematician organizes a lottery in which the prize is an infinite amount of money. When the winning ticket is drawn, and the jubilant winner comes to claim his prize, the mathematician explains the mode of payment: "1 dollar now, 1/2 dollar next week, 1/3 dollar the week after that..."

Cheese
and spam. (Euggh)
Posts: 3909
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Location: ¿burning you?

Right, a mathematician, an engineer and a scientist are in a train somewhere.
They all look out of the window and see something like this in a field:

The engineer says "All the cows here are brown"
The scientist says "There is at least one cow here, which is brown"
The mathematician says "There is at least one cow here, which is brown on at least one side"
hermaj wrote:No-one. Will. Be. Taking. Cheese's. Spot.
Spoiler:
LE4dGOLEM wrote:Cheese is utterly correct on all fronts.
SecondTalon wrote:That thing that Cheese just said. Do that.
Meaux_Pas wrote:I hereby disagree and declare Cheese to be brilliant.

Aardvarki
Posts: 129
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:51 pm UTC
What do you call an Eigen Sheep? (Highlight below for answer)

A lamb, duh.

22/7
I'm pretty sure I have "The Slavery In My Asshole" on DVD.
Posts: 6475
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Location: 127.0.0.1
A polar bear is simply a rectangular bear after a coordinate transform.
Totally not a hypothetical...

Steroid wrote:
bigglesworth wrote:If your economic reality is a choice, then why are you not as rich as Bill Gates?
Don't want to be.
I want to be!

Stickmaster
Posts: 16
Joined: Sun Jul 22, 2007 3:18 am UTC
Why do computer scientists always confuse Halloween and Christmas?

Because OCT31 eqauls DEC25!

Nimz
Posts: 580
Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2007 9:49 am UTC
Location: the origin
Why does a chicken coop have two doors?

Because if it had four doors it would be a chicken sedan.

======================

Why is the indefinite integral of dy the sweetest integral of all?

Because it's C and y.

======================

A lawyer, a gardener, and an engineer are arguing over what the first profession in the universe was. The gardener claims that gardening was the first profession, since Adam and Eve were supposed to tend to the Garden of Eden. The engineer rebutts that engineering came before that, since God created the world from chaos and waste. The lawyer simply smiles and asks, "Where do you think the chaos and waste came from?"

======================

What do you get when you factor xc + xd + kc + kd?

(x+k)(c+d)

Okay, I admit that was especially lame, but while we're at it, what is the product of (x-a)(x-b)(x-c)...(x-z)?

0. (x-x) is one of the factors

======================

What do you find in the geometric junkyard?

A wrecked-angle

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Got that last one from 777 Mathematical Conversation Starters by John dePillis (awesome book)

edit: I forgot one:
What is the square root of 69?

8.something
LOWA

McHell
Posts: 322
Joined: Fri Jun 22, 2007 12:52 pm UTC
Location: Ellowen Deeowen
Let Epsilon < 0