Anyone know of any math jokes? [Archive] - Straight Dope Message Board

don't ask

07-21-2002, 09:56 PM

The old standby:

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, since it was dark. 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.

So what is the moral of the story?

The squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the sum of the squaws on the other two hides.

peasea

07-21-2002, 09:56 PM

What do you get when you cross a malaria-ridden mosquito with a mountain climber?

Nothing. You can't cross a vector with a scalar.

peasea

07-21-2002, 10:02 PM

Hey, how do you make those spoiler thingies?

lee

07-21-2002, 11:25 PM

Q: What is purple and commutes?
A: An Abelian Grape!

Q: What is non-orientable and lives in the ocean?
A: Moebius Dick!

The Flood is over and the ark has landed. Noah lets all the animals out and says, "Go forth and multiply."

A few months later, Noah decides to take a stroll and see how the animals are doing. Everywhere he looks he finds baby animals. Everyone is doing fine except for one pair of little snakes. "What's the problem?" says Noah.
"Cut down some trees and let us live there", say the snakes.

Noah follows their advice. Several more weeks pass. Noah checks on the snakes again. Lots of little snakes, everybody is happy. Noah asks, "Want to tell me how the trees helped?"

"Certainly", say the snakes. "We're adders, so we need logs to multiply."

Top ln(e^10) reasons why e is better than pi

10) e is easier to spell than pi.
9) pi ~= 3.14 while e ~=2.718281828459045.
8) The character for e can be found on a keyboard, but pi sure can't.
7) Everybody fights for their piece of the pie.
6) ln(pi^1) is a really nasty number, but ln(e^1) = 1.
5) e is used in calculus while pi is used in baby geometry.
4) 'e' is the most commonly picked vowel in Wheel of Fortune.
3) e stands for Euler's Number, pi doesn't stand for squat.
2) You don't need to know Greek to be able to use e.
1) You can't confuse e with a food product.

lee

07-21-2002, 11:27 PM

http://www.workjoke.com/projoke22.htm has many of my favorites including some of the ones above.

Horseflesh

07-21-2002, 11:30 PM

Originally posted by peasea
Hey, how do you make those spoiler thingies? Press the Quote button on a post that is using it and you will see the appropriate tags.

I saw this on a t-shirt at a college once:

pr2?

Pie are round.

Cake are square.

ultrafilter

07-21-2002, 11:42 PM

Originally posted by lee
Q: What is purple and commutes?
A: An Abelian Grape!

No, no. It's like this:

Q: What's purple, worshipped by a limited number of people, and commutative?
A: A finitely-venerated abelian grape.

And my personal favorite: Let e be less than zero.

(I told that last one to one of my former professors. He opined that some of his students in basic analysis wouldn't know that it's a joke.)

And of course, what's yellow and equivalent to the axiom of choice? Zorn's lemon.

Bryan Ekers

07-22-2002, 12:16 AM

Q:How do mathemeticians divide up a fish catch?

A:With Poisson Distribution.

Q: How does a mathematician have a religious experience?

A: When he sees the line lay down with the lambda.

Big Kahuna Burger

07-22-2002, 12:35 AM

Two adders go to a fertility clinic. The doctor tells them that if they want to conceive, they have to have sex on a table made from a big log. They do this, and sure enough the female adder becomes pregnant and has a baby. The lesson? With a log table, even adders can multiply.

Forbin

07-22-2002, 12:41 AM

Why is 77 better than 69?

Because you get ate more.

Zsofia

07-22-2002, 01:21 AM

Did you hear about the plant in the math professor's office?

It grew square roots.

Thanks, folks, I'll be here all week.

Dragonblink

07-22-2002, 01:33 AM

Ooh ooh my brother just told me this one!

There are 10 kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.

meyer

07-22-2002, 01:56 AM

I heard this on the boards once before, it's more of a physics joke really, but here goes:

Werner Heisenburg is driving down the street one day when he is pulled over by a cop. The cop says "Do you know how fast you were going, Sir?"

To which Heisenburg replies: "No, but I know exactly where I was."

Hee hee. Gets me every time.

Cataclysm

07-22-2002, 06:34 AM

Similar to Dragonblink's joke:

There are 3 types of people in the world.

Those that can count and those that can't.

And also.

What did the number 0 say to the number 8?

Nice belt!

RTFirefly

07-22-2002, 09:56 AM

My favorite from the page lee linked to:

Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall,
Aleph-null bottles of beer,
You take one down, and pass it around,
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall!

Hello Again

07-22-2002, 10:17 AM

"To Be or not to be...*" Actually, that is the answer.
The question is "What's the square root of 4b^2?"

*2b or -2b... get it?

RTFirefly

07-22-2002, 10:18 AM

Algebraists do it in groups.
Real analysts do it continuously and almost everywhere.
Complex analysts don't care if they do it or not, since for them, the imaginary part is just as good as the real part.
Pure mathematicians do it rigorously.
Logicians do it by symbolic manipulation.
Topologists prefer open sex.
Dynamicists do it chaotically.
Combinatorists do it in every possible permutation and combination, but they do it discretely.

g8rguy

07-22-2002, 12:19 PM

So back in the good old days of communism in eastern Europe, some Polish mathematicians decide to flee the country and get to England. They sneak out to a small local airport, but someone alerts the authorities so they have police hot on their tails. One of them hops into the pilot's seat and is trying to start it, hoping to escape before they get caught. The police are getting closer, and closer... "Why can't you get this thing started!" one of them yells. The one at the controls replies... "I can't help it. I'm just a simple Pole in the complex plane."

*groan*

Khadaji

07-22-2002, 12:46 PM

Originally posted by Dragonblink
Ooh ooh my brother just told me this one!

There are 10 kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.

LOL. Thanks, I love it.

Khadaji

07-22-2002, 12:59 PM

87% of all statistics are made up.

The Ace of Swords

07-22-2002, 01:01 PM

Well, here's a geek joke, tangental to math at best.

I saw a guy on the IRT the other day wearing a T-Shirt that said

"Stop bothering me before I replace you with a very small shell script"

Ferrous

07-22-2002, 01:21 PM

I heard this one on this board, but I don't remember who posted it. Sorry, whoever you are.

The Mathemetician's (or maybe physicist's) alternate to the Interrupting Cow joke:

"Knock-knock."
"Who's there?"
"Interrupting coefficient of friction."
"Interrupting co..."
"MU!"

Enright3

07-22-2002, 03:39 PM

One of my faves, that I got from this very board...
Q: Why did the chicken cross the moebius strip?
A: To get to the same side

E3

zweisamkeit

07-22-2002, 04:14 PM

The sad thing is that I read the title and clicked on it, thinking, "ooh! I hope that no one has used my favourite math riddle yet!" (yeah, riddle isn't neccesarily a joke, but work with me, people!)

Here goes:

So you're in rush hour traffic and stuck behind this one car. You see his license plate. It's one of those vanity plates that you occasionally see. It says:

TAN 90

So what kind of car is it?

An Inifiniti

Thank you! Thankyouverymuch!

My calc 3 teacher said that we NEEDED to have vectors down pat for the class. So, "you're gonna have to be VECTORious". heh heh heh

JonTheHasher

07-22-2002, 04:48 PM

Originally posted by zweisamkeit
The sad thing is that I read the title and clicked on it, thinking, "ooh! I hope that no one has used my favourite math riddle yet!"

Very, very sad...I had the same thought.

What do you get when you cross an elephant and a grape?

(elephant)(grape)sinq

SisterCoyote

07-22-2002, 05:05 PM

I don't know any particular math jokes (not being very mathematically inclined). I know one chemistry joke:

Poor little Willy
We'll be seeing him no more
For what he thought was H2O
Was H2SO4.

And, courtesy of a friend's mom, who was taking a sadistics...I mean, statistics class:

Prof draws a distribution curve on the board with one large bump in the middle and says, "this is a unimodal curve."

Draws a distribution curve on the board with two large bumps and says, "This is a bimodal curve"

Three Large Bumps: Trimodal

Four large bumps: Can anyone in the class tell me what this is?

Friend's Mom: Quasimodal!

Nightsong

07-22-2002, 05:09 PM

Here's one I got ages ago...

"Drinking and calculus don't mix. You should never drink and derive." :D

*slinks away before things get thrown at her*

___
<< "Chaos Theory is a new theory invented by scientists panicked by the thought that the public were beginning to understand the old ones." ---Mike Barfield >>

Arnold Winkelried

07-22-2002, 05:13 PM

I would repeat my joke about fractions, but most people don't get the point.

Mangetout

07-22-2002, 05:23 PM

Originally posted by Khadaji
87% of all statistics are made up. The remaining 33% are flawed by miscalculation.

Medea's Child

07-22-2002, 05:30 PM

My dad has something horrible about mountain climbing and second derivatives, but I can't quite recall the set up, so I'll share my little sister's first pun. She made this herself, mind you, when she was just a tiny baby girl.

Q: What do two and two make?
A: Four

Q:What do two and four make?
A:Six

Q: What do four and cars make?
A: Money! (foreign cars...)

The family was very proud.

Cisco

07-22-2002, 05:34 PM

Originally posted by g8rguy
So back in the good old days of communism in eastern Europe, some Polish mathematicians decide to flee the country and get to England. They sneak out to a small local airport, but someone alerts the authorities so they have police hot on their tails. One of them hops into the pilot's seat and is trying to start it, hoping to escape before they get caught. The police are getting closer, and closer... "Why can't you get this thing started!" one of them yells. The one at the controls replies... "I can't help it. I'm just a simple Pole in the complex plane."

*groan*

This is the first time in all my years that I have ever laughed my ass off at a joke that I don't even get. If anyone would like to explain it to me so I can laugh even harder I would greatly appreciate it :D

handy

07-22-2002, 06:17 PM

This always gets a laugh:

"What does a mathematician do when he has constipation?"

"He works it out with a pencil."

photopat

07-22-2002, 06:54 PM

Let me try to get this one right:

A mathematician was being interviewed for a university teaching job. The interviewer asked him what his preferred teaching assignment would be

"Well, I enjoy calculus, trigonometry, algebra and geometry, but I draw the line at graphing.

funkynige

07-22-2002, 07:13 PM

Oooh, ooh, mine hasn't been said yet! Well the one my (very mad) maths lecturers told us one that his daughter got from Cambridge -

Two functions were walking down the street, one says to the other - 'I hope we don't get derivated', the other says 'I don't care, I'm e^x [e to the power of x], it doesn't affect me'. When they turn the corner a robber says 'I'm d/dy!'

sorry

Cervaise

07-22-2002, 07:18 PM

I've posted this on the boards a couple of times before, but what the hell.

The dairy farmer wants to know how to get the best production from his cows. He hires as consultants a psychologist, an architect, and a mathematician.

The psychologist says, "You'll want to put a window in each of the cow's stalls so they can see outside. Then you want to paint the stalls green. That way, they'll be happier, and they'll produce more milk."

The architect says, "You can lower the ceiling and change the shape of the stalls. That way, you can get more cows in the same space, and produce more milk."

The mathematician says, "First, assume the cow is a sphere..."

:D

Incidentally, you'll probably also enjoy these (http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/nerd_shirts.htm). I think my favorite might be this one (http://www.thegiftedchildlearning.com/item.html?PRID=469649) (though it's pretty hard to read the joke in the web graphic).

g8rguy

07-22-2002, 10:06 PM

So a farmer wants to build a fence but can only afford 25' of fencing. Since he wants to enclose as much area as possible with his fence, he asks his mathematician son to figure out what the largest area he can enclose is. The son comes over, builds a circular fence, stands inside, and says "I pronounce this to be the outside."

Also, as we're allowing physics jokes...

A pair of hydrogen atoms are standing around talking, when one of them says to the other "I think I've lost my electron." The second asks "Are you sure?" Says the first: "I'm positive."

****

So an electron, a proton, and a neutron walk into a bar. The electron orders a beer and asks "how much will this be?" The bartender tells him it'll be $2.50. The proton orders a wine cooler, asks how much it'll be, and the bartender tells him $3.50. Neutron orders a tequila, asks the bartender how much it'll cost. "For you? No charge."

Yes, I have heard far too many bad physics puns in my lifetime...

Oh, and Cisco, assuming I'm not being terribly whooshed... It's not even very funny or anything, just a bad pun on simple poles in the complex plane, that's all. Helpful explanation, eh? :D

taggert

07-22-2002, 10:39 PM

What did the acorn say when he grew up?

Gee, I'm a tree.

Improv Geek

07-22-2002, 11:04 PM

Alright - here goes.

Differential "X" song --

Differential "X"!,
Differential "Y"!
"A" square, "B" square
Integral of pi!
Engineers touchdown!
Engineers yell!
Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets!
Fight like hell!

that always cracks me up.... its a true Georgia Tech fight song.

What is 6.9? -- A great thing destroyed by a period. *Rimshot*

What is every girls nightmare and every lit student's nightmare? -- Mobius dick (wait for it...)

Fibonacci is not a shortened form of the Italian name that is actually spelled: F i bb ooo nnnnn aaaaaaaa ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.

Why do computer scientists confuse Christmas and Halloween? -- Because Oct 31 = Dec 25

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.

Alright, I'm spent. Someone let me know when you the lumberjack band called "The logarithms" breaks out into MTV.

Ronin

Improv Geek

07-22-2002, 11:08 PM

Alright I lied, one more --

Old mathematicians never die; they just lose some of their functions.

Ronin

xcheopis

07-22-2002, 11:36 PM

From a friend:
How many numerical analysts does it take to screw in a light bulb? 0.9973 after the first three iterations.

How many statisticians does it take to change a lightbulb? Two, plus or minus three.

How many applied mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One, who gives it to two statisticians, thereby reducing it to an earlier riddle.

How many topologists does it take to change a light bulb? One, but he can only change it into a homeomorphic space.

Mersavets

07-23-2002, 03:22 AM

Originally posted by Ace0Spades
Well, here's a geek joke, tangental to math at best.

I saw a guy on the IRT the other day wearing a T-Shirt that said

"Stop bothering me before I replace you with a very small shell script" Well, in that case; if you hold a Unix shell to your ear, can you hear the C?

majinborg

07-23-2002, 08:50 AM

A physicist, an engineer, and a mathematician are each locked in a separate room. Each room has no furniture or windows, and contains only one can of canned food. No can openers are given out. After two days, the doors to the rooms are opened. When the physicist's door is opened it is found that he analyzed the can, found the weakest points in its structure, and applied pressure, thus opening the can. When the engineer's door is opened, it is found that he slammed the can against the wall until it burst open. When the mathematician's door is opened, he is found huddled in a corner, the unopened can on the floor in front of him, mumbling to himself: "Assume the can is open, assume the can is open . . . "

::ducks and runs::

Mort Furd

07-23-2002, 09:32 AM

Q: What is 6 times 69?
A: An orgy!

Second Guest

07-23-2002, 10:28 AM

I saw this on another message board this morning:

ALGEBRAIC SOCIOLOGY

Knowledge is Power
Time is Money
Power is Work over Time.

So, substituting algebraic equations for these time-worn bits of wisdom, we get:

K = P (1)
T = M (2)
P = W/T (3)

Now, do a few simple substitutions:

Put W/T in for P in equation (1), which yields:
K = W/T (4)

Put M in for T into equation (4), which yields:

K = W/M (5).

Now we've got something. Expanding back into English, we get:

Knowledge equals Work over Money.

What this MEANS is that:

1. The More You Know, the More Work You Do, and
2. The More You Know, the Less Money You Make.

Solving for Money, we get:

M = W/K (6)
Money equals Work Over Knowledge.

From equation (6) we see that Money approaches infinity as Knowledge approaches 0, regardless of the Work done.

What THIS MEANS is:

The More you Make, the Less you Know.

Solving for Work, we get

W = M K (7)
Work equals Money times Knowledge

From equation (7) we see that Work approaches 0 as Knowledge approaches 0.

What THIS MEANS is:

The stupid rich do little or no work.

Working out the socioeconomic implications of this breakthrough is left as an exercise for the reader.

bouv

07-23-2002, 11:08 AM

Ooh, Second Guest reminded me of a math joke I have heard many times here at RPI:

Women requre time and money, so:

Women = (time)(money)

Time is money, so replacing time for money we get:

Women=(money)(money) or, Women = money2

Well, we all know that money is the root of all evil, i.e., money=root(evil), so therfore:

Women=root(evil)2 = evil

So, we can easily deduce that women are evil.

Swampwolf

07-23-2002, 11:15 AM

my favourite isn't quite a joke, but it's a mathematical limerick:

( (12+144+20+(3x sq.rt.4) ) / 7) + 5x11=81+0

Sorry, but the "square root" symbol doesn't translate.

And it reads:
A dozen, a gross and a score
plus three times the square root of four
divided by seven
plus five times eleven
is nine squared, and not a bit more

Cabbage

07-23-2002, 01:12 PM

Here's an old one:

Theorem: All horses are the same color.

Proof: (By induction on n=the number of horses)

Suppose there was one horse. It is then clear that all horses would be the same color.

Suppose the theorem is true for a group of n-1 horses (i.e., if we have a group of n-1 horses, then they must all be the same color).

Consider a group of n horses. Remove some arbitrary horse, call it horse A. The remaining horses, then, must all be the same color (since they form a group of n-1 horses).

Now return horse A to the group, and remove a different horse, call it horse B. Again, the remaining horses must all be the same color. In particular, horse A is now in this group, so we have shown that if we have a group of n horses, they must also all be the same color.
Therefore, by the principle of induction, we have shown that all horses must be the same color.

QED

There is a corollary to this theorem which states that all horses have an inifinite number of legs. The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.

Doubting Robert

07-23-2002, 01:58 PM

This is not exactly PC, but, what the heck . . .

Teaching Math in 1950:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5
of the price. What is his profit?

Teaching Math in 1960:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5
of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

Teaching Math in 1970:
A logger exchanges a set "L" of lumber for a set "M" of money. The
cardinality of set "M" is 100. Each element is worth one dollar. Make 100
dots representing the elements of the set "M." The set "C", the cost of
production, contains 20 fewer points than set "M." Represent the set "C" as
a subset of set "M" and answer the following question: What is the
cardinality of the set "P" of profits?

Teaching Math in 1980:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80
and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

Teaching Math in 1990: By cutting down beautiful forest trees, the logger
makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class
participation after answering the question: How did the forest birds and
squirrels feel as the logger cut down the trees? There are no wrong answers.

Teaching Math in 2000:
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is
$120. How does Arthur Andersen determine that his profit margin is $60?

Teaching Math in 2010:
El hachero vende un camion carga por $100. La cuesta de production es
...........

Left Hand of Dorkness

07-23-2002, 02:05 PM

(hopefully not a double post)
On the limerick front:

A mathematician named Hall
has a hexehedronical ball.
And the cube of its weight
Times his age, and plus eight,
is his phone number: give him a call.

A handsome young man from Racine
invented a fucking machine:
both concave and convex
it could fit either sex
(with attachments for those in-between).

handy

07-23-2002, 02:17 PM

"Why do Deaf mathematician's farts smell?"

"So the other Deaf mathematicians can enjoy them too"

refusal

07-23-2002, 02:33 PM

A mathematician, a physicist and a biologist are walking through a building site, and they come to a newly-built, empty house. They stop outside for a minute to catch their breath. They watch two people walk up to the empty house and go inside. Then a few minutes later, they see three people come out. They are all puzzled by this.

The biologist explains "Obviously the two people who went into the house reproduced." The physicist says, "Nonsense. It's just experimental error." Finally it's the mathematician's turn. He ponders it for a few minutes, and then replies "If one more person goes inside, then the house will be empty."

(So sorry for wasting your time.)