Space is limited
In a haiku, so it's hard
To finish what you
New York (CNN). At John F. Kennedy International Airport today, a Caucasian male (later discovered to be a high school mathematics teacher) was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a compass, a protractor and a graphical calculator.
According to law enforcement officials, he is believed to have ties to the Al-Gebra network. He will be charged with carrying weapons of math instruction.
The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center was known as SLAC, until the big earthquake, when it became known as SPLAC — Stanford Piecewise Linear Accelerator.
"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..."
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 pessismistic. 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 colleage grins smugly
when the waitress adds: "...plus C."
Have you heard about the mathematics professor who dreamed that he was addressing his class and woke up to find that he was?
Three boys at a juvenile court in England admitted to stealing £13.71 from a local shop. However, they threw away £1.71 because they couldn't handle the division of the original sum.
A mathematician once organised a raffle and the tickets cost £100 each. The prize-money however was advertised as infinite, and he was inundated with applications for tickets. The lucky winner got £1 the first year, £1/2 the second year, £1/3 the third year...
A huge bridge collapsed, and the consultant engineer who designed it was arrested and charged with professional incompetence. At his trial he blamed everything and everybody except himself. He blamed the materials, he blamed the workmen and he blamed the supervisors. He even blamed the mathematicians who had produced the tables on which he had based his calculations. He said they were so ignorant that they spelled cos with an `h'.
Three Irishmen were being given an intelligence test to decide who should
get a job on building site. Each was asked, "What is 2 + 2?"
The first answered "37" and was ruled out.
The second answered "Wednesday" and he was ruled out also.
The third answered "4".
"That's terrific," said the foreman. "How did you work it out?"
"It was easy," said the Irishman. "I just subtracted 37 from Wednesday".
In 1941 an Oxford mathematician was asked why he wasn't in France fighting
to preserve civilization.
"I," he replied to his questioner, "am the civilization they are fighting
to preserve."
An examiner in mathematics was confronted with one script which bore the
words "Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 5, Line 28", and nothing else. Turning to his
collected Shakespeare he looked up the quoted passage. It turned out to
be
I cannot do the bloody thing.
In some colleges of music, part of the doctoral requirement is to compose
an orginal full length symphony. Because modern music sounds so weird, a
good ploy is to take a well-known classical symphony, write it backwards
and submit it as an original work. One student took the daring step of
taking his professor's doctoral symphony and reversing it. He failed to
receive his degree, the examiners remarking that he had reproduced
Sibelius' Fourth Symphony with not a single note changed.
[A joke about involutions.]
A company manufacturing hair restorer once received the following
testimonial from a grateful customer:
Dear Sirs,[A joke about connected sets.]
Before using your hair restorer I had three bald patches. Now I have only one.
Teacher: If Tom gave you three apples and Bill gave you two apples, how
many apples would you have then?
Mary: Seven apples, teacher.
Teacher: Wrong, Mary, 3 + 2 = 5.
Mary: I know that, teacher, but I have two apples already.
[A joke about boundary conditions.]
I once met a very old man who told me that in his youth he had attended and passed one year of university mathematics at a reputable college. I asked him if he remembered any of it, and he told me he had forgotten all of it except for one vital theorem that stuck in his mind. He quoted the theorem in full. It went as follows:
"All hairy gorillas have big feet, good for climbing."He had absolutely no idea what it meant.
The great number theorist Mordell had an excellent way of dealing with the noxious practice of unsolicited telephone sales pitches while in the United States. Having given the answer to a trivial question over the phone he was told that he had won $50 worth of free dancing lessons. He retorted by asking the salesman the name of the First President of the U.S.A., and on getting the correct answer announced, "Congratulations, you've just won them back again."
Three people, an Englishman, an American, and a native of Zvornik in
Yugoslavia were captured by cannibals. The cannibal chief made a bargain
with them that if anyone could mention the name of a place that he had
heard of, he would let him go free.
"Everyone has heard of London," said the Englishman to himself, so he
answered "London."
"Never heard of it," said the cannibal chief, and he put the Englishman in
the pot.
"Surely this guy has heard of New York, the Big Apple," said the American
to himself, so he answered "New York."
"Never heard of it," said the cannibal chief, and he put the American in
the pot.
"I don't suppose this fellow has ever heard of Zvornik," said the
Yugoslavian to himself, "but then he doesn't seem to have heard of
anywhere else either, and I may as well go down patriotically." So he
answered "Zvornik."
"Hey," said the cannibal chief delightedly, "that's where I got my Ph.D.
in mathematics from."
A topologist visited a psychiatrist and told him that he was worried
because he seemed to spend all his time buying gramophone records and had
a collection of several thousand.
"That's nothing to be worried about," said the psychiatrist. "Lots of
people like music and collect gramophone records."
"But you don't understand," said the topologist. "I just collect them for
the holes in the middle."
From L.E. Dickson's description of his honeymoon: My wife and I both agree it was a great success though I only got two papers written.
Here is a piece of very valuable advice to any young mathematics lecturer starting his career: if you find you are getting more laughs than usual with partial differential equations, just make sure that your trousers are properly zipped up.
Do you know those mathematicians who write in the air with a finger when talking to you about mathematics? I have a friend who does just that but when he is finished, he calmly rubs it all out!
A student once asked Wiener to solve a problem for him, so Wiener thought for a few moments and wrote down the answer. Now what the student really wanted was an explanation of the solution method, so he politely asked Wiener if there was some other way of doing the problem. Wiener thought again, smiled and said, "Yes, there is," and wrote down the answer again.
Wiener once went into a pharmacy and asked for some acetylsalicylic
acid.
"Do you mean aspirin, sir?" asked the pharmacist.
"Yes," said Wiener, "I never can remember that name."
Wiener once went to a doctor and told him that his memory was terrible and
that he couldn't remember anything from one minute to the next.
"How long has this been going on?" asked the doctor.
"How long has what been going on?" said Wiener.
Classification of mathematical problems as linear and nonlinear is like classification of the Universe as bananas and non-bananas.
THE EVOLUTION OF TEACHING
Relations between pure and applied mathematicians are based on trust and understanding. Namely, pure mathematicians do not trust applied mathematicians, and applied mathematicians do not understand pure mathematicians.
The highest moments in the life of a mathematician are the first few moments after one has proved the result, but before one finds the mistake.
Some mathematicians become so tense these days that they do not go to sleep during seminars.
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
— Isaac Newton
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.
— Hal Abelson
The graduate with a Science degree asks, "Why does it work?"
The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How does it work?"
The graduate with a Business degree asks, "How much will it cost?"
The graduate with an Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"
Q: What is a small, red, round thing that has a cherry pit inside?
A: A cherry.
Q: What does the Ph.D. in math with a job say to the Ph.D. in math without
a job?
A: 'Paper or 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.
Q: What is purple and commutative?
A: An Abelian grape...
Q: What is sour, yellow, and equivalent to the axiom of choice...
A: Zorn's lemon...
Q: What is normed, complete, and yellow?
A: A Bananach space...
Q: How does a mathematician call his dog?
A: Cauchy — because it leaves a residue at every pole...
Q: What did they say to Archimedes before he had a bath?
A: You reeka.
Q: What is the difference between a part-time professor of mathematics and
a full-time professor of mathematics?
A: A part-time professor of mathematics is away part of the time while a
full-time professor of mathematics is away all of the time.
He thinks he's really smooth, but he's only C1.
A: "What is this?" as he rubs his hand over an invisible level flat
surface
B: "I dunno"
A: "It's the Fourier Transform of this" as he gives him The Finger
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
From The Guardian:
After being charged £20 for a £10 overdraft, 30 year old Michael Howard of Leeds changed his name by deed poll to "Yorkshire Bank PLC Are Fascist Bastards." The Bank has now asked him to close his account, and Mr Bastards has asked them to repay the 69p balance by cheque, made out in his new name.
Herbert A. Millington
Chair – Search Committee
412A Clarkson Hall
Whitson University
College Hill, MA 34109
Dear Professor Millington,
Thank you for your letter of March 16. After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me an assistant professor position in your department.
This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually large number of rejection letters. With such a varied and promising field of candidates it is impossible for me to accept all refusals.
Despite Whitson's outstanding qualifications and previous experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet my needs at this time. Therefore, I will assume the position of assistant professor in your department this August. I look forward to seeing you then.
Best of luck in rejecting future applicants.
Sincerely,
Chris L. Jensen