Dilbert, anyone? or the last proof you’ll ever need:
Given that
knowledge = power, and, furthermore, that
time = money, and finally, that power = work/time, we find…
substituting terms: knowledge = work/time
and, since time = money…
knowledge = work/ money
finally, solving for money, we find that
money = work/knowledge,
so that as knowledge approaches zero, money approaches infinity, therefore…
the less you know, the more you make.
Or, there’s this:
A university committee was selecting a new dean. They had narrowed the candidates down to a mathematician, an economist and a lawyer.
Each was asked this question during their interview: “How much is two plus two?”
The mathematician answered immediately, “Four.”
The economist thought for several minutes and finally answered, “Four, plus or minus one.”
Finally the lawyer stood up, peered around the room and motioned silently for the committee members to gather close to him. In a hushed, conspiratorial tone, he replied, “How much do you want it to be?”
The problem here, pantom, is that the first half of your post requires an understanding of the concept of limits, which we’ve already dicarded. It was still funny. To me at least.
The second half neglects the inclusion of an engineer, who would just punch the examiner in the nose (note the precision) and walk out with his head held high.
Please, folks, I only copied that thing off the web site I posted.
If I had thought it up, the economist would have said, “Four, plus or minus one standard deviation.”
That would have been more accurate.
Yes, but by the same laws, you could go into your bank, write a check for $10, and tell them to give it to you in 10,000 $100 bills, since the two numbers are equal. Then close your account.
Have to stick it to them before they figure it all out and stick it to us.
Oh, we’ve got lots of ways to get around that old-fashioned notion of counting.
We could have the marketing department work up some projections. Or, the simple crowd-pleasing applause meter.
But for really serious math questions, like calculating an orbit to Mars or something, we need a more rigorous method. I think we should get a bunch of mathematicians together, each advocating a unique solution, place them on a remote location (like a small island), and then vote them off the island one by one. The survivng mathematician wins and his or her solution is deemed correct.
Why don’t we just make everything equal to 5? That would make things sooo much easier. Counting the votes? He got 5 he got 5. It’s a tie! Hey and then we would have 2 presidents, or one could be a vice if he decides not to mess with the big, scary looking component…and that means we would have 2 people to get 2 differnet outlooks on things! “How many nuclear weapons does he have?” “five sir.”
Perhaps we should have a roundtable (however you want to define that) discussion and extend this to all sciences as well. We can finally clean up the arbitrary nonsense in so-called physics.
But there are Math jokes. Here is one of my favorites:
A public school teacher was detained at Heathrow Airport in London as she tried to board a plane. She was carrying a protractor, compass, and graphing calculator.
She was charged with carrying weapons of math instruction.
