# Take An Academic Potshot! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 16, 2022, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/take-an-academic-potshot/966271 "2022-06-16T01:04:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2022, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/take-an-academic-potshot/966271/1 "2022-06-16T01:04:30Z")
The purpose of this thread is to take an academic potshot. The idea is to make a barbed but good-natured joke at any subject, field, specialty or associated item. Genuine antipathy belongs in the pit and not this thread. To begin, **you can say two things about the winners of the highest award in mathematics, the Fields Medal. That they have a first-class mind with the potential to do anything, and that they didn’t.** (Assuming that the opportunity cost of spending time solving an unsolvable theoretical problem might be of less use than other things…) Your turn. ---
**Author:** ![FrenchDunadan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frenchdunadan/32/5449_2.png) [@FrenchDunadan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FrenchDunadan)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2022, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/take-an-academic-potshot/966271/2 "2022-06-16T05:18:02Z")
1st Mathematician can say “All prime numbers are odd numbers but one”. and 2nd mathematician can respond “No, all prime numbers are odd numbers but two” and they’ll be equally right. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2022, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/take-an-academic-potshot/966271/3 "2022-06-16T06:22:51Z")
Raymond Smullyan had a whole chapter full of these in his book “_What Is The Name Of This Book?_” ---
**Author:** ![kferr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71e660/32.png) [@kferr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kferr)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2022, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/take-an-academic-potshot/966271/4 "2022-06-16T11:36:49Z")
Any academic persuit that contains the word “science” is by definition not science. See Computer Science, Political Science, Social Science, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2022, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/take-an-academic-potshot/966271/5 "2022-06-16T12:48:13Z")
A cynic knows the price of all things and the value of none. ---
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2022, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/take-an-academic-potshot/966271/6 "2022-06-16T12:55:38Z")
Ouch. LOL ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2022, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/take-an-academic-potshot/966271/7 "2022-06-16T12:55:38Z")
Yes, but a pessimist can never be unpleasantly surprised. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2022, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/take-an-academic-potshot/966271/8 "2022-06-16T16:53:19Z")
Which ones did you like the most? ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2022, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/take-an-academic-potshot/966271/9 "2022-06-16T22:45:08Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > Which ones did you like the most?   [of Raymond Smullyan’s “professor” stories] I’d have to dig the book up out of the cobwebs and review, but there is one that I remember: Smullyan tells a story of four math professors (lots of stories about math professors!) at Princeton. He doesn’t name names, referring to them only as A, B, C, and D. But he relates that all the students said this of them: When Prof. A says something is “obvious”, he means: If you go home and think about it for a week, you will see it. When Prof. B says something is “obvious”, he means: If you go home and think about it for the rest of your life, the day _may_ come when you see it. When Prof. C says something is “obvious”, he means: The whole class has known it for six weeks already. When Prof. D says something is “obvious”, that usually means it is wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2022, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/take-an-academic-potshot/966271/10 "2022-06-19T23:57:35Z")
A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are in a train in Scotland and see a black sheep out the window. The engineer says, “Ah the sheep in Scotland are black.” The physicist replies, “You can’t infer that. All you can infer is that there is at least one black sheep in Scotland.” “No”, says the mathematician, “You can infer only that there is at least one sheep in Scotland, at least one side of which is black.” A man walks into a brains store and sees a display in which assistant professors’ brains are in a bin labeled $10/lb, associate professors’ brains are in a bin labeled $15/lb, full professors’ brains are in a bin labeled $20/lb and finally there is a bin of deans’ brains labeled $1000/lb. The man walks up to the owner and asks why deans’ brains are so much more expensive than the others. “Do you realize”, was the reply, “How many deans you have to slaughter to get a pound of brains?” Along the same line, there is a story told about the famous mathematician Emil Artin who left Germany in the 30s for a job at Princeton (his wife was Jewish). The story was that he was walking through the math office one summer day when the phone rang. He picked it up and the Mrs. Bigbucks asked irately why her Johnny had failed calculus. After getting no satisfaction from Artin, she asked whom she was speaking with. “Professor Emil Artin, madame.” She replied , “Professor! I will speak with no one lower than a dean.” “Madame, there is no one lower than a dean.” Then there is the story of the dean of arts and the dean of science having a pleasant stroll when the science dean remarks that he has this wonderful department of mathematics that costs almost nothing to run since all a mathematician needs to be productive is a desk, a chair, a pencil, paper, and a wastebasket. The arts dean says the sociology department is even cheaper. All a sociologist needs is a desk, a chair, a pencil, and paper. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2022, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/take-an-academic-potshot/966271/11 "2022-06-20T00:29:50Z")
Is there a Mathematics Jesus who can turn theorems into coffee? (Apologies to Paul Erdos, not least for the missing umlaut.) ---
**Author:** ![Tatterdemalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/43a26b/32.png) [@Tatterdemalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tatterdemalion)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2022, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/take-an-academic-potshot/966271/12 "2022-06-20T02:38:12Z")
If all the economists in all the nation’s universities were laid end to end, they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2022, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/take-an-academic-potshot/966271/13 "2022-06-20T19:06:07Z")
A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing about whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon the doctor said, “The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because Eve was made from Adam’s rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply incredible surgical feat.” The architect did not agree. He said, “But if you look at the Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of that, the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been an architect.” The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said, “Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?”