http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-08
You have to click the red button to reveal the extra joke I am talking about.
Q: What did the mathematician give to the man who ogled his wife?
A: i^3
I know i^3 is equal to -i.
So what is the author implying? That the mathematician gave the man 1 less eye? If so, it’s a pretty weak joke.
“A black eye” would be an understandable answer to me. Is there some way “i cubed” can be interpreted that way?
“Let’s start with the punch line we want to prove and work backward from that…” 
Next we’ll start introducing joke lemmas!
It’s a lot funnier if the answer is i^7.
I glasses?
eye cubed…cold stare?
“The evil eye” was my first thought.
270°? is there some sort of “spin him around” joke in there?
Well, i is the square root of negative one, so the answer could be “-1 i” minus one eye, get it?
There’s also an “IQ” joke in there somewhere. I just can’t seem to put my finger on it.
The OP already figured that out, but was asking if there was an answer that was actually funny. I’m afraid not.
The joke does not have the ^ sign.
I assume the 3 represents the part of the wife’s anatomy being ogled.
That was my first thought, but it doesn’t work as something the husband would give the ogler.
“minus one eye” is probably it. I’m not sure how high the bar for math humor can really be set.
I thought maybe it was a paper with that number written on it. Either as “I see what you’re up to” or as “look at this instead”. Could be wrong.
Agree with that.
You don’t need the carat if you’re writing it down, you only use it if you’re typing and can’t express a superscript properly. i[sup]3[/sup] is the same as i^3.
I’m familiar with math notation. But I was suggesting that what was intended was not the mathematical meaning of the term but rather the visual. In that context the omission of the ^ was relevant, in that its inclusion would have changed the visual.
Yes. If you look at “i3” sideways, like an emoticon, the “3” is the wife’s breasts, and the “i” represents the guy’s eyes, with one swollen shut. I didn’t say it was funny.
But if you go the web site and see the original way it was written, you’ll see that it’s not like that.
I thought the I was a face and the 3 was a lump on his head over his ear.
A poke in the eye