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m31andyA few terrible (maths) jokes. Just for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gritsinmisery. Yes, you can beat her up for encouraging me.
Unfortunately, no pun in ten did
Trigonometry for farmers: swine and coswine...
* * * * *
Q: What is has only one side and lives in the ocean?
A: Möbius Dick... 1
* * * * *
Deep:
Life is complex: it has both real and imaginary components.
* * * * *
There are 10 kinds of mathematicians in the world. Those who can undestand binary and those who don't.
* * * * *
A man goes and asks a mathematician, an engineer and an accountant what two plus two is.
The mathematician answers "Four, to the same level of significance."
The engineer answers "It's about four."
The accountant looks shifty for a moment. He checks that they are alone before sitting down in front of the questioner, leaning in close, and whispers "what do you want it to be?"
* * * * *
Mathematicians never die - they merely lose their functions.
Heads of Department never die - they merely lose their faculties.
Accountants never die - they merely depreciate to a nominal value and are then written off.
* * * * *
When Noah's Ark finally came to rest on top of Mount Ararat, and when the waters had receded, Noah and his family - along with all the animals - left the Ark, and God told them to be fruitful and multiply upon the earth.
But after all those months under deck on an overcrowded ark, none of the animals was in the mood for sex anymore.
Noah, who knew all too well what God could do in his wrath if his creatures were disobedient, got desperate.
So, he tore down one of the Ark's masts, cut it into pieces, and built a table out of the timber. Then he told one of the snakes to perform a sexy dance on top of the table while he made all the other animals gather around it. After a while the snake's seductive moves showed an effect: One animal after the other started rocking in the rhythm of the snake's dance, and one after the other sneaked off with its mate to more private places... Finally, the dancing snake and her mate were all alone, and they too disappeared.
And Noah was pleased that God's will would be heeded.
Q: What does this story from the book of Genesis teach us about maths?
A: When you have to multiply, all you need are a log table and an adder!
* * * * *
"Divide fourteen sugar cubes into three cups of coffee so that each cup has an odd number of sugar cubes in it."
"That's easy: one, one, and twelve."
"But twelve isn't odd!"
"It's an odd number of cubes to put in a cup of coffee2..."
* * * * *
One day, Jesus said to his disciples: "The Kingdom of Heaven is like 3x squared plus 8x minus 9."
A man who had just joined the disciples looked very confused and asked Peter: "What, on Earth, does he mean by that?"
Peter replied: "Don't worry - it's just another one of his parabolas."
* * * * *
"The number you have dialed is imaginary. Please, rotate your phone by 90 degrees and try again..."
* * * * *
My life is all arithmetic, of course. I try to add to my income, subtract from my weight, divide my time, and avoid multiplying.
* * * * *
A physicist, a statistician, and a mathematician go to the races and place bets on horses.
The physicist's horse comes in last. "I don't understand it. I have determined each horse's strength through a series of careful measurements."
The statistician's horse does a little bit better, but still fails miserably. "How is this possible? I have statistically evaluated the results of all races for the past month."
They both look at the mathematician whose horse came in first. "How did you do it?"
"Well", he explains. "First, I assumed that all horses were identical and spherical..."
* * * * *
Some engineers are trying to measure the height of a flag pole. They only have a measuring tape and are quite frustrated trying to keep the tape along the pole: It falls down all the time.
A mathematician comes along and asks what they are doing. They explain it to him.
"Well, that's easy..."
He pulls the pole out of the ground, lays it down, and measures it easily.
After he has left, one of the engineers says: "That's so typical of these mathematicians! What we need is the height - and he gives us the length!"
* * * * *
A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are asked to count up in prime numbers:
The mathematician: "Three's a prime, five's a prime, seven's a prime, eleven's a prime, and I'll leave the rest as an exercise for the students.
The physicist: "Three's a prime, five's a prime, seven's a prime, nine is a statistical error."
The engineer: "Three's a prime, five's a prime, seven's a prime, nine's a prime..."3
* * * * *
Zenophobia: the irrational fear of convergent sequences.
* * * * *
Q: Did you hear about the statistician who made a career change and became an gynaecologist?
A: His specialty was histerectograms.
* * * * *
General Conversions
Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter: Eskimo Pi
2000 pounds of Chinese soup: Won ton
Time between slipping on a peel and landing smack on the pavement: 1 bananosecond
Weight an evangelist carries with God: 1 billigram
Half of a large intestine: 1 semicolon
1000 aches: 1 kilohurtz
Basic unit of laryngitis: 1 hoarsepower
1 billion microphones: 1 megaphone
2000 mockingbirds: two kilomockingbirds4
52 cards: 1 decacards
3 statute miles of intravenous surgical tubing at Yale University Hospital: 1 I.V. League
* * * * *
1. Though, actually, brain and dirty place have met again with that one. Actually, it's gone back to articulated penii. Which if you really want to know about, you're going to have to ask me (how). *cough*
2. Unless you're my father. He's into super-saturated solutions.
3. C takes great delight in telling this one. I've no idea why... ;-)
4. This one might take a couple of seconds - work at it. It's worth it.
I grabbed most of these from: http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~runde/jokes.html
Just don't ask me to start writing down the old shaggy dog stories. I think someone might shoot me.
ETA: to fix the minor inaccuracies in the jokes. My friendslist is a haven for pedants, obviously. *grin*
gritsinmisery. Yes, you can beat her up for encouraging me.Unfortunately, no pun in ten did
Trigonometry for farmers: swine and coswine...
* * * * *
Q: What is has only one side and lives in the ocean?
A: Möbius Dick... 1
* * * * *
Deep:
Life is complex: it has both real and imaginary components.
* * * * *
There are 10 kinds of mathematicians in the world. Those who can undestand binary and those who don't.
* * * * *
A man goes and asks a mathematician, an engineer and an accountant what two plus two is.
The mathematician answers "Four, to the same level of significance."
The engineer answers "It's about four."
The accountant looks shifty for a moment. He checks that they are alone before sitting down in front of the questioner, leaning in close, and whispers "what do you want it to be?"
* * * * *
Mathematicians never die - they merely lose their functions.
Heads of Department never die - they merely lose their faculties.
Accountants never die - they merely depreciate to a nominal value and are then written off.
* * * * *
When Noah's Ark finally came to rest on top of Mount Ararat, and when the waters had receded, Noah and his family - along with all the animals - left the Ark, and God told them to be fruitful and multiply upon the earth.
But after all those months under deck on an overcrowded ark, none of the animals was in the mood for sex anymore.
Noah, who knew all too well what God could do in his wrath if his creatures were disobedient, got desperate.
So, he tore down one of the Ark's masts, cut it into pieces, and built a table out of the timber. Then he told one of the snakes to perform a sexy dance on top of the table while he made all the other animals gather around it. After a while the snake's seductive moves showed an effect: One animal after the other started rocking in the rhythm of the snake's dance, and one after the other sneaked off with its mate to more private places... Finally, the dancing snake and her mate were all alone, and they too disappeared.
And Noah was pleased that God's will would be heeded.
Q: What does this story from the book of Genesis teach us about maths?
A: When you have to multiply, all you need are a log table and an adder!
* * * * *
"Divide fourteen sugar cubes into three cups of coffee so that each cup has an odd number of sugar cubes in it."
"That's easy: one, one, and twelve."
"But twelve isn't odd!"
"It's an odd number of cubes to put in a cup of coffee2..."
* * * * *
One day, Jesus said to his disciples: "The Kingdom of Heaven is like 3x squared plus 8x minus 9."
A man who had just joined the disciples looked very confused and asked Peter: "What, on Earth, does he mean by that?"
Peter replied: "Don't worry - it's just another one of his parabolas."
* * * * *
"The number you have dialed is imaginary. Please, rotate your phone by 90 degrees and try again..."
* * * * *
My life is all arithmetic, of course. I try to add to my income, subtract from my weight, divide my time, and avoid multiplying.
* * * * *
A physicist, a statistician, and a mathematician go to the races and place bets on horses.
The physicist's horse comes in last. "I don't understand it. I have determined each horse's strength through a series of careful measurements."
The statistician's horse does a little bit better, but still fails miserably. "How is this possible? I have statistically evaluated the results of all races for the past month."
They both look at the mathematician whose horse came in first. "How did you do it?"
"Well", he explains. "First, I assumed that all horses were identical and spherical..."
* * * * *
Some engineers are trying to measure the height of a flag pole. They only have a measuring tape and are quite frustrated trying to keep the tape along the pole: It falls down all the time.
A mathematician comes along and asks what they are doing. They explain it to him.
"Well, that's easy..."
He pulls the pole out of the ground, lays it down, and measures it easily.
After he has left, one of the engineers says: "That's so typical of these mathematicians! What we need is the height - and he gives us the length!"
* * * * *
A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are asked to count up in prime numbers:
The mathematician: "Three's a prime, five's a prime, seven's a prime, eleven's a prime, and I'll leave the rest as an exercise for the students.
The physicist: "Three's a prime, five's a prime, seven's a prime, nine is a statistical error."
The engineer: "Three's a prime, five's a prime, seven's a prime, nine's a prime..."3
* * * * *
Zenophobia: the irrational fear of convergent sequences.
* * * * *
Q: Did you hear about the statistician who made a career change and became an gynaecologist?
A: His specialty was histerectograms.
* * * * *
General Conversions
Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter: Eskimo Pi
2000 pounds of Chinese soup: Won ton
Time between slipping on a peel and landing smack on the pavement: 1 bananosecond
Weight an evangelist carries with God: 1 billigram
Half of a large intestine: 1 semicolon
1000 aches: 1 kilohurtz
Basic unit of laryngitis: 1 hoarsepower
1 billion microphones: 1 megaphone
2000 mockingbirds: two kilomockingbirds4
52 cards: 1 decacards
3 statute miles of intravenous surgical tubing at Yale University Hospital: 1 I.V. League
* * * * *
1. Though, actually, brain and dirty place have met again with that one. Actually, it's gone back to articulated penii. Which if you really want to know about, you're going to have to ask me (how). *cough*
2. Unless you're my father. He's into super-saturated solutions.
3. C takes great delight in telling this one. I've no idea why... ;-)
4. This one might take a couple of seconds - work at it. It's worth it.
I grabbed most of these from: http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~runde/jokes.html
Just don't ask me to start writing down the old shaggy dog stories. I think someone might shoot me.
ETA: to fix the minor inaccuracies in the jokes. My friendslist is a haven for pedants, obviously. *grin*
