(*) Here is one by an anonymous mathematician (posted by Ron Ferguson to math-teach Mailing List): [A math. prof.] gave 4 problems as a final example. The first three asked for proofs of theorems. The last proposed a statement and asked the student to "prove or disprove" the statement. One student struggled for a long time, then approached the professor: "On this last problem, do you want me to prove it or disprove it?" the student asked. "Which ever is correct," replied the professor. "Oh," said the student, " I can do either one. I just wanted to know which you preferred." Article 7615 of rec.humor: >From: ed@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Ed bunny Ahrenhoerster) Subject: Math joke collection Keywords: LONG Long long Message-ID: <6723@uwmcsd1.UUCP> Date: 4 Sep 88 00:29:18 GMT Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee I have had a number of requests for my collection of math jokes, so I will just post it here. These were taken off the net a year or two ago (from sci.math), so these are 100% guaranteed repeats. (hey at least i am honest :-) Included is the name of whoever posted these originally. -Ed ****************************************************************************** >From uwmcsd1!ig!agate!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!cod!jscosta Wed Jun 29 02:01:57 C DT 1988 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q: What's yellow, and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice? A: Zorn's Lemon. James Currie ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Heisenberg might have slept here. Aaron Avery, University of Wisconsin ------------------------------------------------------------------------- My geometry teacher was sometimes acute, and sometimes obtuse, but always, he was right. ------------ I saw the following scrawled on a math office blackboard in college: 1 + 1 = 3, for large values of 1 Rob Gardner, HP Ft. Collins, CO --------------------------------------------------------------------------- lim ---- 8-->9 \/ 8 = 3 Donald Chinn, UC-Berkeley --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Weiner was in fact very absent minded. The following story is told about him: When they moved from Cambridge to Newton his wife, knowing that he would be absolutely useless on the move, packed him off to MIT while she directed the move. Since she was certain that he would forget that they had moved and where they had moved to, she wrote down the new address on a piece of paper, and gave it to him. Naturally, in the course of the day, an insight occurred to him. He reached in his pocket, found a piece of paper on which he furiously scribbled some notes, thought it over, decided there was a fallacy in his idea, and threw the piece of paper away. At the end of the day he went home (to the old address in Cambridge, of course). When he got there he realized that they had moved, that he had no idea where they had moved to, and that the piece of paper with the address was long gone. Fortunately inspiration struck. There was a young girl on the street and he conceived the idea of asking her where he had moved to, saying, "Excuse me, perhaps you know me. I'm Norbert Weiner and we've just moved. Would you know where we've moved to?" To which the young girl replied, "Yes daddy, mommy thought you would forget." The capper to the story is that I asked his daughter (the girl in the story) about the truth of the story, many years later. She said that it wasn't quite true -- that he never forgot who his children were! The rest of it, however, was pretty close to what actually happened... Richard Harter, Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge, MA ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Theorem : All positive integers are equal. Proof : Sufficient to show that for any two positive integers, A and B, A = B. Further, it is sufficient to show that for all N > 0, if A and B (positive integers) satisfy (MAX(A, B) = N) then A = B. Proceed by induction. If N = 1, then A and B, being positive integers, must both be 1. So A = B. Assume that the theorem is true for some value k. Take A and B with MAX(A, B) = k+1. Then MAX((A-1), (B-1)) = k. And hence (A-1) = (B-1). Consequently, A = B. Keith Goldfarb -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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." Lyle Levine, Washington University, St. Louis -------------------------------------------------------------------------- An assemblage of the most gifted minds in the world were all posed the followin g question: "What is 2 * 2 ?" The engineer whips out his slide rule (so it's old) and shuffles it back and forth, and finally announces "3.99". The physicist consults his technical references, sets up the problem on his computer, and announces "it lies between 3.98 and 4.02". The mathematician cogitates for a while, oblivious to the rest of the world, then announces: "I don't what the answer is, but I can tell you, an answer exists!". Philosopher: "But what do you _mean_ by 2 * 2 ?" Logician: "Please define 2 * 2 more precisely." Accountant: Closes all the doors and windows, looks around carefully, then asks "What do you _want_ the answer to be?" Computer Hacker: Breaks into the NSA super-computer and gives the answer. Dave Horsfall, Alcatel-STC Australia, North Sydney ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ During a class of calculus my lecturer suddenly checked himself and stared intently at the table in front of him for a while. Then he looked up at us and explained that he thought he had brought six piles of papers with him, but "no matter how he counted" there was only five on the table. Then he became silent for a while again and then told the following story: "When I was young in Poland I met the great mathematician Waclaw Sierpinski. He was old already then and rather absent-minded. Once he had to move to a new place for some reason. His wife didn't trust him very much, so when they stood down on the street with all their things, she said: - Now, you stand here and watch our ten trunks, while I go and get a taxi. She left and left him there, eyes somewhat glazed and humming absently. Some minutes later she returned, presumably having called for a taxi. Says Mr Sierpinski (possibly with a glint in his eye): - I thought you said there were ten trunks, but I've only counted to nine. - No, they're TEN! - No, count them: 0, 1, 2, ..." Kai-Mikael, Royal Inst. of Technology, Stockholm, SWEDEN -------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's nonorientable and lives in the sea? Mobius Dick. Jeff Dalton, U. of Edinburgh, UK ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Definition: Jogging girl scout = Brownian motion. Ilan Vardi, Stanford -----------------------------------------------------------------------------