Jokes That Every Mathematician Finds Absolutely Hilarious

Kudos to the author for providing explanations, complete with formulas/diagrams/images, and also for crediting (cREDDITing?) his source for each joke.

joshuahedlund• 13 years ago

I saw this on Twitter the other day but even though I've LOVED math jokes since "because 7 8 9" in elementary school, I've been avoiding this post on the principle of not rewarding the linkbaity (and quite likely disprovable) title.

jedahan• 13 years ago

all sourced from reddit eh?

hazov• 13 years ago

http://spikedmath.com/445.html Spiked Math slowed down recently but it's still good.

tikhonj• 13 years ago

Here's one I liked from Quora:

A mathematician gets tired of being mocked by his physicist friends for studying useless things. He decides to go out and listen to the most useful mathematical talk he can find. After looking through the schedule, he settles on a talk about "The mathematics of gears"--after all, gears are useful for all sorts of machinery! It's hard to find something more practical.

So when the talk comes around, he's there early sitting the front row. The grey-haired professor walks up to the front and begins: "so, the theory of gears with real numbers of teeth is well understood..."

opinali• 13 years ago

What is the difference between an experimental physicist, a theoretical physicist and a mathematician?

The experimental physicist, to do his work, needs a $10M laboratory, paper and pencil, and a trash can. The theoretical physicist needs paper and pencil, and a trash can. The mathematician needs paper and pencil.

lake992• 13 years ago

The joke about the integral of 1/cabin is wrong. Integral with respect to what? Integral[1/cabin, x] = x/cabin + k

phonon• 13 years ago

Integral[1/cabin, cabin] = Log[cabin] + c

lake992• 13 years ago

I know that's what was intended in the joke. We can't just assume the variable with respect to which it was integrated. I gave a counterexample.

Jokes That Every Mathematician Finds Absolutely Hilarious

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