The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center was known as SLAC, until the
big earthquake, when it became known as SPLAC.
SPLAC? Stanford Piecewise Linear Accelerator.
Q: What is the value of the contour integral around Western Europe?
A: Zero, all the Poles are in Eastern Europe.
A group of mathematicians and a group of engineers were
taking a train to attend a joint conference. Each of the
mathematicians had a ticket, but only one of the engineers did.
The mathematicians were snickering about this when one of the
engineers retured to the car and shouted, "Conductor's coming!"
All of the engineers hurried back and crammed into a restroom,
and when the conductor came by, he knocked on the door and said,
"Ticket please." The engineer with the ticket passed it under
the door, and the conductor punched it and returned it. After the
conductor left, all the engineers came piling out, and the
mathematicians sat there in amazement.
On the return trip the mathematicians decided to do the same
thing, so they only purchased one ticket amonst them. This time,
none of the engineers had a ticket. The mathematicians were
snickering again, when an engineer ran in the car and said
"Conductor's coming." All of the mathematicians piled into one
restroom and all of the engineers into another. The last engineer
in knocked on the restroom of mathematicians and said, "Ticket, please."
He then took the ticket and joined the rest of the engineers.
I figure that 2 is the oddest prime of all, because it's the
only one that's even!
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.
1 + 1 = 3, for large values of 1. (Ty's note: UGH)
The USDA once wanted to make cows produce milk faster, to improve the
dairy industry.
So, they decided to consult the foremost biologists and recombinant
DNA technicians to build them a better cow. They assembled this team
of great scientists, and gave them unlimited funding. They requested
rare chemicals, weird bacteria, tons of quarantine equipment, there
was a horrible typhus epidemic they started by accident, and, 2 years
later, they came back with the "new, improved cow." It had a milk
production improvement of 2% over the original.
They then tried with the greatest Nobel Prize winning chemists around.
They worked for six months, and, after requisitioning tons of chemical
equipment, and poisoning half the small town in Colorado where they
were working with a toxic cloud from one of their experiments, they
got a 5% improvement in milk output.
The physicists tried for a year, and, after ten thousand cows were
subjected to radiation therapy, they got a 1% improvement in output.
Finally, in desperation, they turned to the mathematicians. The
foremost mathematician of his time offered to help them with the
problem. Upon hearing the problem, he told the delegation that they
could come back in the morning and he would have solved the problem.
In the morning, they came back, and he handed them a piece of paper
with the computations for the new, 300% improved milk cow.
The plans began:
"A Proof of the Attainability of Increased Milk Output from Bovines:
Consider a spherical cow......"
A bunch of Polish scientists decided to flee their repressive
government by hijacking an airliner and forcing the pilot to fly them
to a western country. They drove to the airport, forced their way on
board a large passenger jet, and found there was no pilot on board.
Terrified, they listened as the sirens got louder. Finally, one of
the scientists suggested that since he was an experimentalist, he
would try to fly the aircraft.
He sat down at the controls and tried to figure them out. The sirens
got louder and louder. Armed men surrounded the jet. The would be
pilot's friends cried out, "Please, please take off now!!!
Hurry!!!!!!"
The experimentalist calmly replied, "Have patience. I'm just a simple
pole in a complex plane." (Tyrone's note: double ugh!)
The limit of n as n approaches infinity of (sin (x)/n) = 6
Proof: cancel the n in the numerator and denominator.
Two male mathematicians are in a bar. (Tyrone' note: Here we
intuitively have a contradiction: Mathmaticians have no social life, so
it follows that they would not be in a bar)
The first one says to the second that the average person knows very
little about basic mathematics.
The second one disagrees, and claims that most people can cope with a
reasonable amount of math.
The first mathematician goes off to the washroom, and in his absence
the second calls over the waitress.
He tells her that in a few minutes, after his friend has returned, he
will call her over and ask her a question. All she has to do is
answer one third x cubed.
She repeats `one thir -- dex cue'? He repeats `one third x cubed'.
Her: `one thir dex cuebd'? Yes, that's right, he says. So she
agrees, and goes off mumbling to herself, `one thir dex cuebd...'.
The first guy returns and the second proposes a bet to prove his
point, that most people do know something about basic math.
He says he will ask the blonde waitress an integral, and the first
laughingly agrees.
The second man calls over the waitress and asks `what is the integral
of x squared?'.
The waitress says `one third x cubed' and while walking away, turns
back and says over her shoulder `plus a constant'!
A somewhat advanced society has figured how to package basic knowledge
in pill form.
A student, needing some learning, goes to the pharmacy and asks what
kind of knowledge pills are available. The pharmacist says "Here's a
pill for English literature." The student takes the pill and swallows
it and has new knowledge about English literature!
"What else do you have?" asks the student.
"Well, I have pills for art history, biology, and world history,"
replies the pharmacist.
The student asks for these, and swallows them and has new knowledge
about those subjects.
Then the student asks, "Do you have a pill for math?"
The pharmacist says "Wait just a moment", and goes back into the
storeroom and brings back a whopper of a pill and plunks it on the
counter.
"I have to take that huge pill for math?" inquires the student.
The pharmacist replied "Well, you know math always was a little hard
to swallow."
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 desiccated 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...
A statistician can have his head in an oven and his feet in ice, and
he will say that on the average he feels fine.
A team of engineers were required to measure the height of a flag
pole. They only had a measuring tape, and were getting quite
frustrated trying to keep the tape along the pole. It kept falling
down, etc.
A mathematician comes along, finds out their problem, and proceeds to
remove the pole from the ground and measure it easily.
When he leaves, one engineer says to the other: "Just like a
mathematician! We need to know the height, and he gives us the
length!"
Did you hear the one about the statistician?
Probably....
The guy gets on a bus and starts threatening everybody: "I'll integrate
you! I'll differentiate you!!!" So everybody gets scared and runs
away. Only one person stays. The guy comes up to him and says:
"Aren't you scared, I'll integrate you, I'll differentiate you!!!" And
the other guy says; "No, I am not scared, I am e to the x."
If you integrate (1/cabin) you get log cabin
Oops, you forgot your constant of integration.
It's really: log cabin + C
And, as we all know: log cabin + C = houseboat
In the bayous of Louisiana, there is a small river called the Dirac.
Many wealthy people have their mansions near its mouth. One of the
social leaders decided to have a grand ball. Being a cousin of the
Governor, she arranged for a detachment of the state militia to serve
as guards and traffic directors for the big doings. A captain was
sent over with a small company; naturally he asked if there was enough
room for him and his unit. The social leader replied, "But of course,
Captain! It is well known that the Dirac delta function has unit
area."
"The reason that every major university maintains a department of
mathematics is that it is cheaper to do this than to institutionalize
all those people."
One day a farmer called up an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician
and asked them to fence of the largest possible area with the least
amount of fence. The engineer made the fence in a circle and
proclaimed that he had the most efficient design. The physicist made
a long, straight line and proclaimed 'We can assume the length is
infinite...' and pointed out that fencing off half of the Earth was
certainly a more efficient way to do it. The Mathematician just
laughed at them. He built a tiny fence around himself and said 'I
declare myself to be on the outside.'
An engineer, a mathematician, and a computer programmer are driving
down the road when the car they are in gets a flat tire. The engineer
says that they should buy a new car. The mathematician says they
should sell the old tire and buy a new one. The computer programmer
says they should drive the car around the block and see if the tire
fixes itself.
An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician find themselves in an
anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no
doubt already heard. After some observations and rough calculations,
the engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing. A few
minutes later the physicist understands, too, and chuckles to himself
happily as he now has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper.
This leaves the mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed
right away that he was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite
rapidly the presence of humour from similar anecdotes, but considers
this anecdote to be too trivial a corollary to be significant, let
alone funny.
Math and Alcohol don't mix, so...
PLEASE DON'T DRINK AND DERIVE
Then there's every parent's scream when their child walks into the
room dazed and staggering:
OH NO...YOU'VE BEEN TAKING DERIVATIVES!!
A group of scientists were doing an investigation into problem-solving
techniques, and constructed an experiment involving a physicist, an
engineer, and a mathematician.
The experimental apparatus consisted of a water spigot and two identical
pails, one of which was fastened to the ground ten feet from the spigot.
Each of the subjects was given the second pail, empty, and told to fill the
pail on the ground.
The physicist was the first subject: he carried his pail to the spigot,
filled it there, carried it full of water to the pail on the ground, and
poured the water into it. Standing back, he declared, "There: I have
solved the problem."
The engineer and the mathematician each approached the problem similarly.
Upon finishing, the engineer noted that the solution was exact, since the
volumes of the pails were equal. The mathematician merely noted that he
had proven that a solution exists.
Now, the experimenters altered the parameters of the task a bit: the pail
on the ground was still empty, but the subjects were presented with a pail
that was already half-filled with water.
The physicist immediately carried his pail over to the one on the ground,
emptied the water into it, went back to the spigot, filled the pail, and
finally emptied the entire contents into the pail on the ground,
overflowing it and spilling some of the water. Upon finishing, he
commented that the problem should have been better stated.
The engineer, in turn, thought for some time before going into action. He
then took his half-filled pail to the spigot, filled it to the brim, and
filled the pail on the ground from it. Again he noted that the problem had
an exact solution, which of course he had found.
The mathematician thought for a long time before stirring. At last he
stood up, emptied his pail onto the ground, and declared, "The problem has
been reduced to one already solved."
First of all let me make it clear that I have nothing against
contravariant functors. Some of my best friends are cohomology
theories! But now you aren't supposed to call them contravariant
anymore. It's Algebraically Correct to call them 'differently
arrowed'!!
In the same way that transcendental numbers are polynomially
challenged?
Manifolds are personifolds (humanifolds).
Neighborhoods are neighbor victims of society.
It isn't PC to use "singularity" - the function is "convergently
challenged" there. (Tyrone's note: Ugh to the power of 5.)
Why did the computer scientist die in the shower?
Because he read the instructions on the shampoo bottle, "Lather,
rinse, repeat."
Why did the calculus student have so much trouble making Kool-Aid?
Because he couldn't figure out how to get a quart of water into the
little package.
Q: What did the circle say to the tangent line?
A: "Stop touching me!"
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.
When considering the behaviour of a howitzer:
A mathematician will be able to calculate where the shell will land.
A physicist will be able to explain how the shell gets there.
An engineer will stand there and try to catch it.
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.
Want More? Go Here!
The previous jokes were taken from the folloing locations:
http://apk.net/~holtz/math/humor.txt
http://www.sonoma.edu/math/faculty/falbo/jokes.html
