Talk:Mathematical joke

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 19 May 2008. The result of the discussion was Speedy Keep.

I think maybe this page could be organized with the general explanation, then a bunch of examples. My only concern is that most examples need significant explanation to be comprehensible to non-math people. Grokmoo 16:27, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

We should have a page for science jokes. Bibliomaniac15 23:27, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I just wrote Science humour. samwaltz 18:11, 23 February 2007

Is it in bad taste to point out that the second joke on the log cabin has the integral of 1/cabin, when 1/cabin would be ln cabin or natural log cabin, not in fact log cabin? It's a great joke otherwise. But the derivative of log(x) is 1/xln10 where b > 0. This also assumes that the general term log is log base 10 to the x, as most calculators do. -Anonymous 01:34, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] How about this oldy but goody

\int e^x = f(u_n)

can I add this to the main text? please please? ==Simon

or this one, a mathematician's dessert: P_\pi^t

  • The first one is already in the article. Wahkeenah 09:31, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 10 Types of People

There are only 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary, and those who don't. --BostonMA 02:40, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

That's such an informant (informatics expert?) joke --sigs

There are two types of people in the world: those who can be divided into two groups of people, and those who cannot. Dr. Sunglasses 03:25, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed revision

I've typed up a cleaner version of the article at User:ConMan/Mathematical joke. I've kept most of the information from the article, but arranged it into sections by the type of humour involved. If there's not huge objection I'll bring it over in a couple of days. Confusing Manifestation 12:55, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Your new version looks great! It is well organized and flows much better than the current version. I am all in favor of you bringing it over ASAP. Grokmoo 04:38, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, it's in. Much spiffier, yes? And definitely a better article to appear on WP:UA than the previous version. Confusing Manifestation 03:34, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "trinary" joke

An editor added:

There are only 10 types of people in the world -- those who understand trinary, those who don't, and those who confuse it with binary

This is definitely a joke, and it is definitely related to mathematics. However, I think it is actually a spoof on mathematical jokes. Base 3 is ternary not trinary, and the sets of people described in the joke overlap. Those who confuse "trinary" (or ternary) with binary belong in the set of those who do not understand "trinary" (or ternary). Thus, I think it belongs in its own category of jokes that mock mathematical jokes. --BostonMA 17:13, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Nope. Being class-referential, doesn't make it a non-class joke. As for trinary/ternary, they are synonyms. --Belg4mit 23:59, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] black sheep joke?

This page should certainly contain the "All sheep in Scotland are black" joke; is there a reason it isn't here?

Because it demonstrates an important idea of mathematics - that of how much generalisation is possible - I have inserted it, although I would point out that the article does not need to be the receptacle of every mathematical joke under the sun. If anyone has access to any of the books referenced in Renteln and Dundes' paper I wouldn't mind seeing them referenced here as well, if appropriate. I may also include the links in there if it appears useful. Confusing Manifestation 10:05, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Astronomer joke

I'm not sure I get the astronomer joke. Perhaps it needs to be explained. Is the point that for the astronomer a series that exceeds the magnitudes found in astronomy is divergent, while one which takes an excessively long time to diverge is convergent? If so, I don't understand the humor. Further, since the astronomer is in error, I think it would be more appropriate for an astronomy humor article than a mathematical joke article. but then perhaps I exceed pi/2 am obtuse. --BostonMA 18:07, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't get it either. Confusing Manifestation 05:18, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Sum((1000^n)/n!) is convergent and Sum(n!/(1000^n)) is divergent, but if you try to evaluate them the first one will look divergent and vice versa, unless you use thousands of terms (and calculating the factorial of four-digit numbers is a bit tricky). Try using a smaller number instead of 1000, e.g Sum((20^n)/n!) and Sum(n!/(20^n)). If you use the first twenty terms, the first series will seem to be growing without control and the second series will seem to be converging towards 0.056, but later the first converges to 485165194.4 (you just need 54 terms to have this accuracy), and the second will start speeding up again, surpassing the first at the 70th term and dramatically diverging. --Army1987 21:46, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
I understand the point about the naive observation of the first few, or even first many, terms. What I don't get is the humor. What is funny about this? --BostonMA 22:32, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
According to the reference [1] it has to do with the solution to the three-body problem. There is a known convergent series to calculate it, but it converges so slowly that getting the value to any useful precision requires so many terms that his solution is of little practical use. So astronomers argue that the problem hasn't actually been solved. (BTW, I didn't notice how the first series was nothing but the series expansion for exp(1000)...)--Army1987 17:07, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
OK, I'm beginning to see the humor in it. Mathemeticians might declare a problem to be "solved" when they can give a formula for the answer, even though calculations using that formula may be infeasible. I think that if the joke is to remain in the article, there definitely needs to be explaination of the humor. --BostonMA 20:49, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
There already is a link to that pdf document, but I think few people read it. I'm explaining the joke. --Army1987 13:00, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, I now get it, but I don't actually find it funny. Still each to his/her own, and I'm willing to let it stay. Confusing Manifestation 02:13, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] i/8

One I vaguely remember: why does root(-1/64) feel ill? Because i/8 (I over-ate). Perhaps somebody can add it in. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.143.9.5 (talk • contribs) 09:41, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

That's not a bad one, although I'm not 100% sure how to fit it in. I do think that the article needs to focus more on the idea of the mathematical joke, using examples to demonstrate the different ways they develop their humour, rather than a repository of every mathematical joke under the sun (the links should prove sufficient for that). Confusing Manifestation 09:09, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Why is six so afraid? Because seven ate nine. --Army1987 09:42, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Or this one; Why is six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine. Why is seven afraid of eight? Mathematical induction.T.Stokke (talk) 21:11, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 69

I don't get the joke about the integral from 10 to 13 of 2x with respect to x. I know what a soixante-neuf is, but is the integral an expression like another, choosen just because it is fancier than 3×23, or does it itself have a humour meaning? (I'm not a native English speaker.) --Army1987 15:14, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

No, to my knowledge it just happens to be an integral chosen which evaluates to that number. For whatever reason, it does seem to be an integral used regularly for that purpose, which I first encountered here, I don't know how popular it is in general. Confusing Manifestation 01:29, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
That's with no doubt one of the worst jokes I've ever heard. BTW, as for that site, I don't even understand why people are supposed to mis-evaluate it as 42. --Army1987 10:18, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
I always preferred "What's the square root of 69? 8 something." But that's just me.::: —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.169.255.226 (talk) 06:09, 6 February 2007 (UTC).

A physicist is asked to list all the divisors of 60. He divides 60 by 1 and gets zero remainder, then divides it by 2 and gets zero remainder, then he tries with 3, 4 and 5. After dividing it by 6 and getting zero remainder again, he concludes: "Well, I guess all positive integers are divisors of 60..." --Army1987 19:29, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Math joke from This Hour Has 22 Minutes

Claude Shannon, inventor of binary code, died today, surrounded by loved ones... and loved zeros.--Anchoress 03:43, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some missing classics that might be squeezed in

  • What do you get when you cross an elephant with a grape? Elephant-grape sin(theta).
    • What do you get when you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito? Nothing... you can't cross a vector with a scalar (scaler).

e^x and a constant are walking down the street. They see someone coming from the opposite direction. e^x turns to the constant and says, "You'd better hide, quick! I see a derivative coming! Don't worry, I'll be fine." The constant hides, and when the derivative arrives, e^x says "Hi! I'm e^x." The derivative replies, "Hi! I'm d/dy."

--ragesoss 04:01, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

And I forgot to add the all time elementary school classic "Why was 6 afraid of 7?" "Because 7 8 9" "7 ate 9, get it?"--ragesoss 04:04, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Relationship

Removed from the article:

They integrated from the very point of origin. Her curves were continuous, and even though he was odd, he was a real number. They both wanted to get skewed. The day their lines first intersected, they became an ordered pair.
From then on it was a continuous function. They were both in their prime, so in next to no time they were horizontal and parallel.
She was awed by the magnitude of his perpendicular line, and he was amazed by her conical projections. "Bisect my angle!" she postulated each time she reached her local maximum. He taught her the chain rule as she implicitly defined the amplitude of his simple harmonic motion. They underwent multiple rotations of their axes, until at last they reached the vertex, the critical point, their finite limit. After that they slept like Logs. Later she found him taking a right-handed limit, that was a problem, it was improper form. He meanwhile had realized that she was irrational, not to mention square.
They diverged.
She's currently reaching the limit in a relationship that is somewhat undefined. He is currently unable to afford dating because he cosined a loan for his son, tan.

I don't see it as being funny, or a particularly good example of a mathematical joke (it pales into insignificance compared to the story of little Polly Nomial, for example). I have removed it from the article twice in the past couple of days. I also removed it when I cleaned it up, which was about the same time an article devoted to it was deleted.

So, my question is simple - is this joke actually worth keeping in the article? Confusing Manifestation 12:40, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not a mathematical joke per se, but involves mathematicians...

Two mathematicians are in a bar. The first one says to the second that the average person knows very little about basic math. The second one disagrees, and claims that most people can cope with a reasonable amount of math. The first mathematician goes off to the washroom, and in his absence the second calls over the waitress. He tells her that in a few minutes, after his friend has returned, he will call her over and ask her a question. All she has to do is answer “One third x cubed.” She agrees, and goes off mumbling to herself. The first guy returns and the second proposes a bet to prove his point. He says he will ask the blonde waitress an integral, and the first laughingly agrees. The second man calls over the waitress and asks “What is the integral of x squared?” The waitress says “One third x cubed,” and while walking away, turns back and says, “Plus a constant!” —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.85.48.159 (talk • contribs)

Check under Non-mathematicians - it's already in there. Confusing Manifestation 13:16, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Hmm. I like the above version better than the one in the article. - dcljr (talk) 09:52, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Good

I like the joke in the opening sentence! :) --HappyDog 18:22, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Read this

Check this out (sexual themes): The Perils of Polly Nomial, or, Impure Mathematics.

[edit] Possible jokes

I know this isn't a joke book, and that we should maybe move stuff to Wikibooks, but consider the following:

  • Why don't people talk about 288? It's two gross.
  • A man asked an engineer, an economist, and a lawyer what 2+2 equaled. The engineer said, "4." The economist said, "Maybe between 3 and 5." The lawyer said, "How much do you want it to be?"
  • Knock knock.

Who's there?

Guzinta

Guzinta who?

2 guzinta 4 two times.

  • When do two 2's make more than 4? When they make 22.
  • An Indian squaw put her 6 pound baby on a buffalo hide. The second put her 6 pound baby on an elk hide. The third put her six pound twins on the hide of a hippo. The squaw on the hippopotamus equaled the sons of the squaws on the other two hides.

Bibliomaniac15 23:26, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help

I can't figure out how to get my joke to match up with its bullet's indention. -- Peregrinefisher 02:12, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Astronomer joke

I am copying the whole joke here. In my opinion it shoud have not been removed, and in the worst case scenario it should remain here. It was erased by User:Mikkalai, with the note "not a joke", but, in my opinion, there was no concensus about that in this same talk. Regretfully, according to Mikkalai's talk page, he is on a break now, so I could not discuss this issue with him.

The joke:

- ===Mathematician and astronomer===

- Mathematicians and astronomers had different ideas about what convergence of a series means: -

-

According to Poincaré, the mathematician says the blue line is convergent, while the astronomer says the purple line is.
According to Poincaré, the mathematician says the blue line is convergent, while the astronomer says the purple line is.

- \sum {\frac{1000^n}{n!}} and \sum {\frac{n!}{1000^n}}[2] - - Mathematically, the former series converges to e1000, and the latter eventually diverges, but, looking to the first few (that is, less than several thousand) terms, the former seems to be diverging and the latter seems to be converging to slightly more than 0.001. Therefore, since most software cannot calculate numbers as large as 10001000 or 1000!, the series could be said to be 'practically' respectively divergent or convergent. (On the graph beside, the series are actually ∑(40n/n!) and ∑(n!/40n). Note that the y-axis is logarithmic, so although the former series looks like it immediately starts slowing down, it actually speeds up until n = 40. On a linear axis the illusion of divergence would be more striking.) - - Poincaré argued that a mathematician would consider the first convergent and the second divergent, while an astronomer would label them the other way round. The joke was based on astronomers' objection to Sundman's solution to the three-body problem. The solution is based on a convergent series which converges so slowly that getting the value to any useful precision requires too many terms to be of practical use. Thus astronomers argue that the problem has not really been solved.

End of the joke

I will now give my opinion. (Please note that I was not the person who included the joke in the first place and I have never edited this article, so there is no intrinsic conflict or interests.) I was actually looking for this joke again, and I couldn't find it, which was extremely disappointing. The fact that it was created by Henri Poincaré (a quote is needed), one the most famous mathematicians of all times, and a mathematician *not a comedian*, makes the joke worth of inclusion in the article as an example of the kind of humor a mathematician may have. It is more representative, in my opinion, than many of the other jokes in the same article. So I would like to be given the reasons why this joke is not a joke. In exchange, I will attempt to give my reasons why I think this is a true joke, and very funny and sarcastic indeed. The context is this. (But please note that my generalizations try to follow common stereotypes, they do not pretend to be realistic.) Mathematicians have their own sense of truth and reality. They do not live in the same world than us, so to say. For them, a mathematical proof is reason enough that something exists or has a certain property, it doesn't matter if the object that exists cannot be constructed, if no one can give an example of the object, or if all the empirical (v.g. computational) evidence shows that such an object does not have a given property (see Nonconstructive proof). For example, we, non-mathematicians, might think that if someone has proved a property for the first 100 millions integers, it has to be true for all integers, since there's overwhelming evidence of that (what are the chances that a counterexample could not be found in 100 million cases?). And there are several examples of cases like this, where empirical evidence has been presented, including if my memory does not fail me, the Goldbach's conjecture. But for mathematicians, "empirical" (v.g. computational) proof is no proof at all. For them truth is not what we see, or what our intuition tells us, but what we have proved rigorously, (quite differently than for non-mathematicians). The joke is a great and funny sarcasm. If we take the mathematician's side, a mathematician who tells the joke is saying, "Astronomers are so 'dumb' they think they can prove something to be true giving examples (empirical evidence)." This was probably Poincaré's intention, and it's clear that he is making fun of the astronomers' myopia and ineptitude when it comes to understand the concept of a mathematical truth. In other words, astronomers were 'idiots' because they couldn't understand that the three body problem was indeed solved. That astronomers could not calculate the solution efficiently was not the mathematician's problem, (but maybe a sign of the astronomers' ineptitude?). This is just my personal interpretation, but I think it pretty much explains why the joke may be funny to a mathematician. Of course, to a non-mathematician, the joke may be meaningless. But this joke makes a great example, (as others that have been given in the article), of why some mathematical jokes are insiders' jokes, that cannot be comprehended by the layman, so to say. I hope I can convince others to include the joke again, or in any case, to at least leave the joke here.

This quote from http://www.ams.org/notices/200501/fea-dundes.pdf helps to make my point: "As for the disparity between the mathematical world and the real world, one joke text claims that the mathematician is unaware of it, while another claims he is aware of it but does not care. The implication is that many mathematicians feel much more at home in the mathematical universe than in the mundane, quotidian, contingent world. The goal of all mathematics is to discover mathematical truth, which does not depend on the here and now. The difficulty, though, is that mathematics cannot appeal to the logic of reality to validate its axiomatic foundation. (...) Mathematical jokes allude to and confirm and validate the existence of the mathematical universe, and they can only be understood and appreciated by the mathematical cognoscenti. The puns reveal what happens when the two worlds collide, and pure mathematics becomes tainted or corrupted or trivialized by its encounter."

These other jokes seem to dwell on the difference between the mathematician and the layman/empirical scientist in their reasoning, understanding of the world and their concept of truth: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ZenosParadoxes.html http://mathworld.wolfram.com/AtLeastOne.html http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Proof.html

Regretfully to this date, in my opinion, the section "Mathematicians" is somewhat weak, and, with the exception of the cow's joke (which I also quote in http://mathworld.wolfram.com/AtLeastOne.html), it does not capture well the kind of mathematical humor that Poincaré's joke or the jokes I am quoting contain. If Poincaré's joke is removed, (because it's too difficult to understand or too long, hopefully not because it is not a joke), it should be replaced by better jokes in the section "Mathematicians", jokes that can capture well the fact that the mathematician sees the world in such a different way than most of us. The examples given in this section are, and I'm sorry to say so, really uninspired.

Coming both of them from the same AMS notice, I propose to change "A mathematician, a biologist and a physicist are sitting in a street café watching people going ..." for "One day a farmer called up an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician and asked them to fence in the largest possible area with the least amount of fence. The engineer made the fence in a circle and proclaimed that he had the most efficient design. The physicist made a long, straight line and proclaimed “We can assume the length is infinite…” and pointed out that fencing off half of the Earth was certainly a more efficient way to do it. The mathematician just laughed at them. He built a tiny fence around himself and said, “I declare myself to be on the outside”."

As a side note, another common famous joke/funny anecdote is the following. I quote this group's conversation http://groups.google.as/group/sci.math/tree/browse_frm/month/1992-09?hl=en&_done=%2Fgroup%2Fsci.math%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fmonth%2F1992-09%3Fhl%3Den%26&hl=en "There was an article in the American Mathematical Monthly (I believe) around 1951 which traced this story very carefully. As I recall, it first appeared in the memoirs of somebody non-mathematical and didn't mention Euler by name (although it could have been nobody else). Diderot was named; supposedly to refute Diderot's atheism, Euler told him something like "x^n + y^n = z; repondez!" Being totally ignorant of mathematics, Diderot could not reply and left the court in embarrassment. The only problem with this story is that Diderot had published mathematical works (mathematical physics?) and was certainly aware that such a statement was nonsense. It was Sol Golomb who gave me a copy of the debunking article; I have it around somewhere.."

This (false?) anecdote can be interpreted, again, as an insider's joke against the non-mathematician's ignorance. (This anecdote also reminds us that we need a quote before attributing the previous joke to Poincaré.)

Thanks. Another Wikipedian 06:48, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, I agree that the astronomer joke belongs in the article, and your reasoning is pretty good and probably deserves to be with it in some form. As to the Euler one, I seem to recall a similar line involving something like a mathematician and someone who was using science/maths to prove the nonexistence of God without really understanding what they were talking about, and the mathematician said "x = (some formula here), and hence god exists", but unfortunately (a) I don't see it as much of a mathematical joke, and (b) I can't find an accurate quote of it. Confusing Manifestation 12:57, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Is it really that funny?"

e^{ix}=e^{2\pi i\frac{x}{2\pi }}=\left( e^{2\pi i}\right) ^{\frac{x}{2\pi }}=1^{\frac{x}{2\pi }}=1 This line was removed (10:37, 28 August 2006) because of "It's a mathematical fallacy, but is it really that funny?" Probably I have a different sense of humor, but it was really funny in my hi school. --TxAlien 19:04, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Since the effectiveness of this joke seems to depend on the sense of humour of each reader, I also don't think that example should have been removed on the basis that it does not seem funny to some. On the other hand, if it were to be put back onto the page, I think it would probably belong in a different section. "Mathematical jokes based on incorrect reasoning", rather than "Mathematical jokes based on misinterpretation of conventional notation", perhaps? Yesitsapril 08:13, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. Humour does tend to be subjective, but as I said in the edit summary as far as I can see it's really just messing around with exponentiation in the complex plane to create a fallacy that's much like the various 0 = 1 proofs, just requiring slightly further advanced maths. So, if people do find it funny, I won't object to it being returned to the article in whichever section is deemed most appropriate, but I will point out that I am extremely worried that the article is going to become a repository for mathematical jokes, rather than an instructive article on what makes a mathematical joke, peppered with some useful examples. Confusing Manifestation 13:36, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I suppose examples of jokes based on mathematical fallacies do already exist in the article. I'm not supporting the placement of the above joke into the article, btw (I didn't find it that funny either). Yesitsapril 07:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Maybe you had to be there. One thing about the proof that 1 = 0 is that if it were true, the universe would collapse to a single point. That would be the cosmic equivalent of erasing the blackboard and starting over. We'd get a Bang out of that. Wahkeenah 18:12, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What's purple and commutes?

An Abelian grape.

I'm a little surprised this isn't here, but I'm not sure where best to add it. DanielCristofani 08:08, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

  • It appeals. Wahkeenah 09:15, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm surprised too; I'd say in the pun section. Although I share ConfusingManifestation's concern about this article becoming a list of jokes, rather than an informative article Yesitsapril 12:26, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to ascribe lofty ideals to this particular article. Wahkeenah
      • I guess so, but surely when we edit this (or any other) article, we do so in the hopes of improving it? Even if we managed to list every funny maths joke in existence, the article would not necessarily be better. I apologise if I seemed to ascribe any ideals, by the way; my intentions were well meaning :) Yesitsapril 13:04, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
        • Actually, you could trim the article substantially by taking out the ones that aren't funny. Wahkeenah 22:52, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Definitely. Although, as discussed above, and elsewhere, humour is a very relative concept. The abelian grape joke, on the other hand, is short and to the point, and could probably be added in the pun section (particularly if one of the other jokes there seems to be too long-winded). Confusing Manifestation 01:32, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Q: What mathematical term describes the list of really funny jokes in this article?
A: The Empty Set.
Wahkeenah 01:35, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm a fan of the "Abelian grape" joke, too. If it ever gets added, don't forget "What's yellow and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice?" --Quuxplusone 09:23, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

What's bent and yellow and complete? - A Bananach space.

[edit] Mathematician's retort

When asked, "What's up?" mathematicians have been known to reply, "North cross west."

Kills me every time. Marsh 12:48, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Or, if asking a Ph.D., "What's up, Doc?" Wahkeenah 12:55, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mathematicians and the lightbulb

How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a light bulb?

One, he gives it to 6 Californians, there by reducing the problem to an earlier joke.

Unix fortune file - author unknown

[edit] carlos mencia

His math jokes often turn into commentary deriding the lack of mathematical literacy among US audiences.


[edit] Correction to Mobius strip comment?

Most everyone knows the trite line: "Why did the chicken cross the road?" "To get to the other side". A mathematical variation follows as: "Why did the chicken cross the Möbius strip?" "To get to the other ... er ...". This joke relies on the fact that since the Möbius Strip is a surface with only one side, anyone trying to give the typical answer will realise its impossibility. The answer is sometimes also given as "To get to the same side", with the same rationale. The joke also relies on the audience confusing crossing it (traversing it perpendicularly) with following it... a logic trick similar to the old riddle "As I was going to St. Ives..."

The joke doesn't in fact rely on the audience confusing crossing it with following it, because a mobius strip has only one edge as well as only one face. It doesn't matter if the audience is talking about travelling from one edge to the other (which is the same) or from one face around to the other (which is also the same). Kybernetikos 22:04, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Yes it does. A mobius strip is not infinitely wide, it has a defined width, just like a road does. You go from one edge across to the other edge, perpendicular to the "path" of the strip, and you've crossed it. Further confusing the issue is the ambiguity of the term "side", which is used colloquially to refer to the "edge" of a road, whereas the term "side" in the mobius strip is the roadway itself. Wahkeenah 23:39, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
If you draw a line across a mobius strip perpendicular to the "long" axis, there will be two points on this line which lie on an edge of the mobius strip. However, they lie on the same edge, because there is only one edge of a mobius strip. Construct a mobius strip for yourself, and you will see that this is true. --BostonMA 00:07, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I see your point(s). That still leaves the usage of the term "side" ambiguous. Maybe that's also supposed to be part of the joke? Wahkeenah 00:11, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I think that is definitely part of the joke. The chicken can cross the strip, but he doesn't get to "the other side" or "the other edge". There just isn't "another side". --BostonMA 00:19, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Having been enlightened, I have tried to make the joke a little clearer so that someone else with my sub-Mensa I.Q. might also get it the first time. :) Wahkeenah 00:20, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Great improvement. Thanks Wahkeenah. --BostonMA 00:22, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pizza

If z is the radius and a is the depth, then pizza is the only food whose name is it's own volume. violet/riga (t) 21:35, 14 September 2006 (UTC) Pizzas are round so it would have to include pi. Square pizza might work though.

Pizza=pi*z*z*a —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Darkmiles22 (talk • contribs) 07:03, 17 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Professional Humor

I think the focus of this article has become somewhat diffuse. The top paragraph states that mathematical jokes are a form of professional humor. Thus, I think the jokes should be the sorts of things that mathematicians would find funny, not things that non-mathematicians would find humorous. Thus, I think the mobius strip joke is very appropriate for this article. However, I think the various jokes involving abuse of mathematics are less appropriate for this article. I would like to know other editor's opinions on this matter. Thanks --BostonMA 21:48, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

More specifically, I propose that we remove the calculator spelling jokes, and the phrases spelled with mathematical symbols jokes. Perhaps they belong in a separate article. --BostonMA 21:53, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, your proposals would certainly narrow the article's audience substantially. Wahkeenah 22:08, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, we could increase the article's audience by including other jokes that are not related to mathematical professional humor. However, I don't think the point of an article is to have a large audience, but to explain and perhaps illustrate a topic. Calculator spellings and their kin, are not something that a typical mathemetician would consider "professional humor" in my opinion. --BostonMA 22:14, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Ideally, then at some point the article would have no audience at all. I would tend to agree, though, that calculator spellings, in this context, are the mathematical equivalent of "knock-knock" jokes. Wahkeenah 22:22, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
A: "I think the jokes should be the sorts of things that mathematicians would find funny"
B: "Ideally, then at some point the article would have no audience at all."
Now that belongs on the the page! --BostonMA 22:32, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Feel free to use it at no extra charge. :) Wahkeenah 22:45, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moved Calculator Spelling Jokes Here

Example:

Christina Aguilera's breasts weigh 69 pounds (enter 69 into calculator), which is too, too, too much (enter 222, making 69222). So she went to 5th Street (enter 5, making 692225) to see her #1 doctor (enter 1, making 6922251) Dr. X (push the multiply button). After 8 surgeries (enter 8 then equals, giving 55378008) she was (turn the calculator upside down to reveal the calculator word) BOOBLESS.

This is also possible with "There was a girl aged 13 (enter 13). She had size 84 boobs (enter 84), but only wanted size 45 (enter 45). So she went to the doctor, and he said "Oh" (enter 0), take these pills two times (enter 2) a day, but she took them four times (enter X, 4, giving 55378008) a day and ended up (turn the calculator upside down) BOOBLESS.

Instead of numbers on a calculator, mathematical notation may be used to form the phrases.

[edit] Gorenstein's chauffeur

An anecdote about Gorenstein's chauffeur appears at the end of the book In Code: A Mathematical Journey (2001) by Sarah Flannery and David Flannery. Daniel Gorenstein was an American mathematician. The anecdote fits with this article, although it may be too long or have copyright restrictions. The text has been checked against the book itself. --Jtir 00:18, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] moo

me head hurts... why... can't math humour be genuinely and naively funny like ol good fart jokes? I'm sure I could imagine a math joke that would appear funny also to your general underdeveloped child-minded passer-by. I'll post it just as soon as I got it ready imagined... :P in the meanwhile, a typical gray math joke about mathematician, phycisist and an engineer competing over who can surround the biggest area using given pieces of straight rigid fence. Engineer sets the fences tidily to a square formation, because that's how the area of a rectangle is maximized. The phycisist is a stroke more cunning: he forms a polygon out of the fences such that the shape is as close to a circle as possible. The mathematician starts collecting the fences closely together while the other two watch puzzled. He climbs inside the formation, and declares: "Let the area where I am standing be defined the outside."

EDIT: it was already there. Ignore this :/  :( sigs

[edit] The Song that Never Ends

I heard this one in a lecture on infinity:

Aleph-nought bottles of beer on the wall, Aleph-nought bottles of beer. You take one down, pass it around, Aleph-nought bottles of beer on the wall.

The joke here being of course that aleph-nought is a form of infinity. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.2.165.10 (talk) 01:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC).

This reminds me of a joke in Futurama, in which the multiplex cinema is called '\aleph_0-plex'. Obviously, it's a recurring joke, so may justify inclusion in the article. Bastin 12:25, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How about this one?

- What did the mathematical parents feed their baby? - Formula.

Wondering whether I should sign this. Adambrowne666 09:52, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Binary humor

The "10 types of people" joke is very overused and not funny anymore. That's the problem with binary humor -- either it's funny, or it's not. Dr. Sunglasses 03:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a jokebook to strive to be funny. Since yiou say it is overused, all the more it is encyclopedic. `'mikkanarxi
I think he was making a joke. That's the problem with binary humor -- either it's funny, or it's not. --BostonMA talk 04:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I was indeed just making a joke here. Dr. Sunglasses 01:14, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Alternatively... --TeaDrinker 04:15, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The 'Girls are evil' joke

This part of the passage: "This, however, is impossible since evil being negative would mean it doesn't have a square root, so money wouldn't exist if that was the case." is neither part of the joke, nor accurate mathematically - money would simply be 'imaginary' - and so still exist in the mathematical sense - AlKing464 04:30, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Negative evil

The commentary on evil being negative strikes me as flawed or at least badly worded. Evil being negative doesn't mean that it's equal to − evil. The negative of evil is good, isn't it? Hence \sqrt{evil} = \sqrt{-good} = i \sqrt{good}, and so \left(\sqrt{evil}\right)^2 = \left(i \sqrt{good}\right)^2 = -good = evil. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Smjg (talk • contribs) 02:12, 7 January 2007 (UTC).

Would that be considered a "further test" to rule out the good? I don't know if I overstepped my bounds by editing the article as a noob, but it's what got me to finally register. (I stated
An alternate version of this joke uses the sign ambiguity inherent in taking the square root of a square
(\sqrt{(-1)^2}=\sqrt{(+1)^2})
to say that
\mathrm{women} = \left (\sqrt{\mathrm{evil}^2}\right ) = \mathrm{\pm evil}
Thus stating that either women are entirely evil, or entirely good (the opposite, or negative, of evil), but there's no way of knowing which state it is without a further test.
on the article. DerKeks 08:50, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, that means that women are actually absolute evil. --Illythr (talk) 15:33, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Original research tag

I added a {{OriginalResearch}} tag to the article since it seems, although funny, to be backing up claims of types of mathematical humor primarily with jokes themselves, not verifiable citations. While there have been some articles on mathematical humor (I seem to recall one in the Monthly some years ago), this article does not seem to rely on such sources. Thoughts? --TeaDrinker 09:06, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Another

One that my work colleague just told me (and that I was able to guess the punchline) to:

Q: What's an anagram of "Banach-Tarski"?

A: Banach-Tarski Banach-Tarski.

Explanation here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Paul G (talk • contribs) 11:04, 17 January 2007 (UTC).

Hah, that's a great one! — Kieff | Talk 11:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Another explanation here: Banach–Tarski paradox. --CiaPan 08:42, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Constipated Mathematician

A joke my good friend Erin told me

Q: What does a constipated mathematician do?

A: Works it out with a pencil. -Robybeef 21:11, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

That's rather crude for technical humor. bibliomaniac15 05:12, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
It's also rather unfunny for a joke. — Kieff | Talk 05:48, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use?

Is the following screenshot from Futurama appropriate for this page?samwaltz 10:06, 23 February 2007 (UTC) 300px|right

[edit] Humor in other fields

I can't find Physics jokes anywhere. Is there a page that I'm just not finding? samwaltz 10:12, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind. I just wrote Science humour. Feel free to add anything you can think of. samwaltz 18:08, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Variation on Girls are Evil

I came up with a new take on the girls=evil joke, and it is rather gay bashing. I have tried to add an intro that forces the gay bashing into fundamentalist bashing, but it still seems a bit crude to me. I do think it is funny though so i would like for feedback on whether it is to risqué.

Mathematician: Pat, what happens when two women get together? Pat Robertson: Well, let me put it in a way you can understand: girls are nothin' but time and money, time is money, and money is the root of all evil

girls=time + money
time=money
girls=2money
money=√evil
girls=2√evil
(2girls)²=(2√evil)²
girls²=evil

So, when two girls multiply all hell breaks loose!darksmiles22 07:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

I removed the vandalism of the opening. It refered to gay humor, women being less intelligent, etc. Aquinas, 04:03, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Nonsense humor

The only example I can recall now:

\textrm{Let }\ \varepsilon < 0\ ...

--CiaPan 13:33, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] xkcd

xkcd is a comic which deals largely in science and math humour. The comic is Creative Commons-licensed, so images can I believe be used in articles. Good source of images. ~ Switch (✉✍☺) 08:26, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Better example?

This comic seems a better example than those given. Could it be used under fair use? In particular, the "find x" is not a math joke at all, just a wisecrack. --Belg4mit 00:01, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

No, it cannot. There are readily free alternatives available, invalidating any claims of fair use. bibliomaniac15 00:29, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
While I'm open to the idea that it may not be usable, you seem to have an odd conception of fair use. If "free alternatives" were so important you think it'd be mentioned in Fair use. Or are you parroting wikipedia dogma? --Belg4mit 15:48, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
See WP:FU. ~ Switch (✉✍☺) 23:24, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] An old favorite of my Calculus teacher...

What's a tangent? Well, that's a guy that's been out in the sun too long. (a [sun]tan[ned] gent[leman])

He had a bunch of others, but I can't ramember them right now. 75.185.161.15 19:41, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I would have advised him not to give up the day job. In a similar vein, Richard Armour said in It All Started with Columbus that the Declaration of Independence had signers, co-signers, and tangents. Wahkeenah 21:18, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Your mother is so fat, her Fourier Transform is the Dirac Delta function —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.150.215.182 (talk) 22:27, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Doh!

I just remembered a rather good one in French... (missing from their page, I linked here on the talk)

 cheval / oiseau = π                      horse / bird = π
 vache * l / oiseau = π                   cow * l / bird = π  (commutation)
 vache * l / β * l (bête à aile) = π      cow * l / β * l = π (winged beast, homophones)
 vache / β = π                            cow / β = π (simplify)
 β * π (bête à pis) / β = π               β * π / β = π (uddered beast, homophones)
 π = π                                    QED

--Belg4mit 21:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unexplained Reverts?

I certainly felt these were simple, and keeping in nature with what I'd seen. Not to mention, the desire to add them prompted me to register in the first place.

I added two, only to find them whacked with no explanation:

\sqrt{4b^2}

(This is another example of square roots having both positive and negative values, and using ' − ' to be the logical operator 'not', giving \pm2b. Meaning, 2b or not 2b, that is the answer.)


This one is less cereberal, and the math is easy to check:

\frac{12+144+20+3\sqrt4}{7}+5(11)=9^2+0

which reads as follows:

A dozen, a gross and a score
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven, plus five times eleven
Is exactly nine squared and no more.


Decide yourself if you like them. Rhudi 03:45, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

While not speaking directly for the editor who reverted you, I suspect it may have a little to do with the opinion (that I, and I believe some others have) that the page is becoming a little too much of a repository for every mathematical joke anyone has every come up with, and not a proper Wikipedia article that provides a few helpful examples plus a lot of references backing up its claims. In particular, see the tags up the top of the page pretty much screaming for some proper references. I'm not saying there's anything particularly wrong with the lines you added - in particular, I've seen the limerick in a few places (mainly on the desks in lecture theatres) - but a thousand Wikipedia editors screaming "I've heard of it" is useless without at least one person screaming "here's a book about it". Confusing Manifestation 07:09, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
In a desire to learn WikiPedia rules, I spent a few moments researching the limerick I wanted to add. I can actually reference the author to whom this is attributed. So, how do I put it back, and reference the author (who is now deceased)? External article about the author, here. I've contacted them to ask about the limerick. A page that attributes the authorship of the limerick can be found here. Rhudi 05:22, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
There are a few ways to cite references, mostly described here, but the general idea is to state the fact (that the "poem" was by Saxon) and provide the links. Admittedly, I would personally like a better source of the poem than a website, but admittedly it's a hell of a lot better than what a lot of the jokes here have. In other words, I am all for putting the limerick in, and probably taking one or more of the uncited jokes out. (In fact, many of the rebuses require a little too much knowledge of mathematical notation to be considered "non-mathematical mathematical jokes", in my mind.) Confusing Manifestation 05:47, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Please consider splitting the third line
   Divided by seven, plus five times eleven
as
   Divided by seven
   Plus five times eleven.
That would make a rhyme and give the limerick proper, five-line structure. --CiaPan 05:37, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Real Mathematical Joke

At first glance, this joke makes no sense, but do the calculations correctly and you should get the joke

"The mother is 21 years older than her child. 6 years from now, the child wil be 5 times younger than it's mother.
Question: Where is the child's father?"

Warning: Do the calculations yourself, it only takes a while and the result is worth it.

Point the cursor on this "red" internal link to see the correct answer Mieciu K 21:29, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

It would be awesome to have a solid reference for this joke. `'Míkka 21:42, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
That, and I really dislike the ambiguity of "five times younger than". Presumably that means "one fifth the age of". Confusing Manifestation 23:00, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Also, it might be a tad clearer if you ask "where is the child's father right now?" — Loadmaster 23:43, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't get it. — Kieff | Talk 01:17, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
3/4 of a year is 9 months, which is approximate time of pregnancy. So, if a child is a minus-pregnancy-time-old now, then it is 'being made' right now. So its father is inside......... --CiaPan 12:12, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
D'oh! Nice. — Kieff | Talk 02:41, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Science humour AFD

Hi All, it looks like there's a AFD up for Science humour. Come to the AFD talk page to comment. samwaltz 19:31, 30 November 2007 (UTC)