----------- MATHS JOKES ----------- ====================================================================== There was an Indian Chief, and he had three squaws, and kept them in three teepees. When he would come home late from hunting, he would not know which teepee contained which squaw, being dark and all. He went hunting one day, and killed a hippopotamus, a bear, and a buffalo. He put the a hide from each animal into a different teepee, so that when he came home late, he could feel inside the teepee and he would know which squaw was inside. Well after about a year, all three squaws had children. The squaw on the bear had a baby boy, the squaw on the buffalo hide had a baby girl. But the squaw on the hippopotamus had a girl and a boy. The moral of this story is: The squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the sum of the squaws on the other two hides. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -Did you hear the one about the statistician? -Probably.... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- There was once a very smart horse. Anything that was shown it, it mastered easily, until one day its teachers tried to teach it about rectanguar coordinates and it couldn't understand them. All the horse's aquaintances and friends tried to figure out what was the matter, but couldn't. Then a new guy (what the heck, a computer engineer) looked at the problem and said, "Of course he can't do it. Why, you're putting Descartes before the horse!" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "What do you get when you cross an elephant with a banana? Elephant banana sine theta in a direction mutually perpendicular to the two as determined by the right hand rule." (little vector joke there) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - TOP TEN EXCUSES FOR NOT DOING THE MATH HOMEWORK 1. I accidentally divided by zero and my paper burst into flames. 2. Isaac Newton's birthday. 3. I could only get arbitrarily close to my textbook. I couldn't actually reach it. 4. I have the proof, but there isn't room to write it in this margin. 5. I was watching the World Series and got tied up trying to prove that it converged. 6. I have a solar powered calculator and it was cloudy. 7. I locked the paper in my trunk but a four-dimensional dog got in and ate it. 8. I couldn't figure out whether i am the square of negative one or i is the square root of negative one. 9. I took time out to snack a doughnut and a cup of coffee. I spent the rest of the night trying to figure which one to dunk. 10. I could have sworn I put the homework inside a Klein bottle, but this morning I couldn't find it. ====================================================================== A Physicist and a mathematician are sitting in a faculty lounge when suddenly, the coffee machine catches on fire. The physicist grabs a bucket and leaps towards the sink, fills the bucket with water and puts out the fire. The second day, the same two sit in the same lounge. Again, the coffee machine catches on fire. This time, the mathematician stands up, grabs a bucket and hands it to the physicist, thus reducing the problem to a previousely solved one. ====================================================================== So a mathematician, an engineer, and a physicist are out hunting together. They spy a deer (*see note below) in the woods. The physicist calculates the velocity of the deer and the effect of gravity on the bullet, aims his rifle and fires. Alas, he misses; the bullet passes three feet behind the deer. The deer bolts some yards, but comes to a halt, still within sight of the trio. "Shame you missed," comments the engineer, "but of course with an ordinary gun, one would expect that." He then levels his special deer-hunting gun (which he has rigged together from an ordinary rifle, a sextant, a compass, a barometer, and a bunch of flashing lights which don't do anything but impress onlookers) and fires. Alas, his bullet passes three feet in front of the deer, who by this time wises up to the danger and vanishes for good. "Well," says the physicist, "Neither of us can shoot the deer." "What do you mean?" pipes up the mathematician. "Between the two of you, that was a perfect shot!" * footnote - How they knew it was a deer: (i) The physicist observed that it behaved in a deer-like manner, so it must be a deer. (ii) The mathematician asked the physicist what it was, thereby reducing it to a previously solved problem. (iii) The engineer was in the woods to hunt deer, therefore it was a deer. ====================================================================== A mathematician and a physicist were asked the following question: "Suppose you walked by a burning house and saw a hydrant and a hose not connected to the hydrant. What would you do?" P: I would attach the hose to the hydrant, turn on the water, and put out the fire. M: I would attach the hose to the hydrant, turn on the water, and put out the fire. Then they were asked this question: "Suppose you walked by a house and saw a hose connected to a hydrant. What would you do?" P: I would keep walking, as there is no problem to solve. M: I would disconnect the hose from the hydrant and set the house on fire, reducing the problem to a previously solved form. ====================================================================== A mathematician, a physicist, an engineer and a computer scientist are given an identical problem: "Prove that all odd numbers greater than 2 are prime numbers." They proceed: Mathematician: 3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime, 9 is not a prime - counterexample - claim is false. Physicist: 3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is a prime, ... Engineer: 3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime, 9 is a prime, 11 is a prime, ... The computer scientist smiles, writes a quick program to prove the statement, and reads the solution from his terminal: 1 is a prime, 1 is a prime, 1 is a prime, 1is a prime, 1 is a prime... ====================================================================== A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were travelling through Scotland when they saw a black sheep through the window of the train. "Aha," says the engineer, "I see that Scottish sheep are black." "Hmm," says the physicist, "You mean that some Scottish sheep are black.." "No," says the mathematician, "All we know is that there is at least one sheep in Scotland, and that at least one side of that one sheep is black!" ====================================================================== A Mathemetician and an Engineer are attending a Physics lecture. The lecture concerns Kulza-Klein theories involving physical processes that occur in spaces with dimensions of 9, 12 and even higher. The Mathematician is sitting, clearly enjoying the lecture, while the Engineer is frowning and looking generally confused and puzzled. By the end the Engineer has a terrible headache. The Mathematician leans over to him and comments about the wonderful lecture. "How do you understand this stuff?" the Engineer asks. "I just visualize the process" the Mathematician replies. "But how can you POSSIBLY visualize somrthing that occurs in 9-dimensional space?" "Easy," the Mathematician replies. "First I visualize it in N-dimensional space, then let N go to 9" ====================================================================== There were once three academics - an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician visiting a small town for a conference. They found themselves forced to share a room in one of the most dirty, dingy, and really low quality hotels that they had ever seen. The room that the had was on the third floor, and the nearest working bathroom was on the fourth. Late that night, the engineer awoke, and decided to avail himself of the lavatory facilities. Going up the stairs, he smelled smoke, and indeed, at the end of the hall he saw a fire. Finding a hose on the wall, he turned it on, ran down the hall, and extinguished the fire. He then visited the bathroom, and returned to bed. An hour later, the physicist awoke, and felt the call of nature. As he went upstairs, he smelled smoke, and found that there was a fire. Finding the hose, he whipped out his calculator, figured out the amount of water needed to extinguish a fire of that size, calculated the flow rate of the hose, turned it on for exactly 15.24 minutes, and extinguished the fire. He then used the bathroom, and returned to bed. Later still, the mathematician awoke and decided that he needed to use the bathroom. Going upstairs, he too found the smoke and fire. Looking around in a panic, he found the fire hose. Realising that he had reduced the situation to a previously solved problem, he merely used the bathroom and then returned to bed. ====================================================================== Why did the cat fall off the roof? Because he lost his mu. (mew=sound cats make, mu=coeff of friction) ====================================================================== ====================================================================== A group of Polish tourists is flying on a small airplane through the Grand Canyon on a sightseeing tour. The tour guide anounces: "On the right of the airplane, you can see the famous Bright Angle Falls." The tourists leap out of their seats and crowd to the windows on the right side of the plane. Unfortunately, this causes a dynamic imbalance, and the plane violently rolls to the side and crashes into the canyon wall. All aboard are lost. The moral to this episode is: always keep your poles off the right side of the plane. ====================================================================== A mathematician and a physicist agree to a psychological experiment. The mathematician is put in a chair in a large empty room and a beautiful naked woman is placed on a bed at the other end of the room. The psychologist explains, "You are to remain in your chair. Every five minutes, I will move your chair to a position halfway between its current location and the woman on the bed." The mathematician looks at the psychologist in disgust. "What? I'm not going to go through this. You know I'll never reach the bed!" And he gets up and storms out. The psychologist makes a note on his clipboard and ushers the physicist in. He explains the situation, and the physicist's eyes light up and he starts drooling. The psychologist is a bit confused. "Don't you realize that you'll never reach her?" The physicist smiles and replied, "Of course! But I'll get close enough for all practical purposes!" ====================================================================== An engineer, a physicist and a mathematican are asked to find the value of 2+2. Engineer (after 3 minutes, with a slide rule): "The answer is precisely 3.9974." Physicist (after 6 hours of experiments): "The value is approximately 4.002, with an error of plus-or-minus 0.005." Mathematician (after a week of calculation): "Well, I haven't found an answer yet but I CAN prove that an answer exists." ====================================================================== Q: What do you get if you cross an elephant with a mountain climber. A: You can't do that. A mountain climber is a scalar. ====================================================================== Q: To what question is the answer "9W." A: "Dr. Wiener, do you spell your name with a V?" ====================================================================== "A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems" -- P. Erdos ====================================================================== Q: What's purple and commutes? A: An abelian grape. ====================================================================== "Algebraic symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about." - Philippe Schnoebelen ====================================================================== There was a mad scientist ( a mad ...social.... scientist ) who kidnapped three colleagues, an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician, and locked each of them in seperate cells with plenty of canned food and water but no can opener. A month later, returning, the mad scientist went to the engineer's cell and found it long empty. The engineer had constructed a can opener from pocket trash, used aluminum shavings and dried sugar to make an explosive, and escaped. The physicist had worked out the angle necessary to knock the lids off the tin cans by throwing them against the wall. She was developing a good pitching arm and a new quantum theory. The mathematician had stacked the unopened cans into a surprising solution to the kissing problem; his dessicated corpse was propped calmly against a wall, and this was inscribed on the floor in blood: Theorem: If I can't open these cans, I'll die. Proof: assume the opposite... ====================================================================== Three men are in a hot-air balloon. Soon, they find themselves lost in a canyon somewhere. One of the three men says, "I've got an idea. We can call for help in this canyon and the echo will carry our voices far." So he leans over the basket and yells out, "Helllloooooo! Where are we?" (They hear the echo several times). 15 minutes later, they hear this echoing voice: "Helllloooooo! You're lost!!" One of the men says, "That must have been a mathematician." Puzzled, one of the other men asks, "Why do you say that?" The reply: "For three reasons. (1) he took a long time to answer, (2) he was absolutely correct, and (3) his answer was absolutely useless." ====================================================================== I saw the following scrawled on a maths office blackboard in college: 1 + 1 = 3, for large values of 1 (Rob Gardner, HP Ft. Collins, CO) ====================================================================== A doctor, a lawyer and a mathematician were discussing the relative merits of having a wife or a mistress. The lawyer says: "For sure a mistress is better. If you have a wife and want a divorce, it causes all sorts of legal problems." The doctor says: "It's better to have a wife because the sense of security lowers your stress and is good for your health." The mathematician says: " You're both wrong. It's best to have both so that when the wife thinks you're with the mistress and the mistress thinks you're with your wife --- you can do some mathematics." ====================================================================== Algebraists do it in groups. ====================================================================== Theorem: a cat has nine tails. Proof: No cat has eight tails. A cat has one tail more than no cat. Therefore, a cat has nine tails. Vectored by Moose Mansions (http://www.splange.freeserve.co.uk/)