Joke 883

funny math (Photo credit: Yuchao.L)

It’s time we got serious around here, so I have a few math/s jokes for you.  If you understand them, please tell me if they are funny (with the exception of the one about the statistician; I got that one).

• Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
• “A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems” (P. Erdos)  Addendum: American coffee is good for lemmas.
• An engineer thinks that his equations are an approximation to reality. A physicist thinks reality is an approximation to his equations. A mathematician doesn’t care.
• Old mathematicians never die; they just lose some of their functions.
• Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them, they translate it into their own language, and forthwith it means something entirely different. — Goethe
• Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things. — J. H. Poincare
• What is a rigorous definition of rigor?
• There is no logical foundation of mathematics, and Gödel has proved it!
• I do not think — therefore I am not.
  

  funny math (Photo credit: Yuchao.L)

Here is the illustration of this principle:
One evening Rene Descartes went to relax at a local tavern. The tender approached and said, “Ah, good evening Monsieur Descartes! Shall I serve you the usual drink?”  Descartes replied, “I think not,” and promptly vanished.

• A topologist is a person who doesn’t know the difference between a coffee cup and a doughnut.
• A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn’t there. (Charles R Darwin)
• A statistician is someone who is good with numbers but lacks the personality to be an accountant.
• Classification of mathematical problems as linear and nonlinear is like classification of the Universe as bananas and non-bananas.
• A law of conservation of difficulties: there is no easy way to prove a deep result.
• A tragedy of mathematics is a beautiful conjecture ruined by an ugly fact.
• Algebraic symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about.
  

  Bad maths! (Photo credit: linniekin)

• Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules.   Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives.
• Math is like love; a simple idea, but it can get complicated.
• Mathematics is like checkers in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state. (Plato)
• The difference between an introvert and extrovert mathematicians is: An introvert mathematician looks at his shoes while talking to you. An extrovert mathematician looks at your shoes.
• Medicine makes people ill, mathematics make them sad and theology makes them sinful. (Martin Luther)

hard math (Photo credit: misterbisson)

From math.utah.edu