Buddy's Math Jokes

A dozen, a gross, and a score,
plus three times the square root of four,
divided by seven,
plus five times eleven,
is nine squared and not a bit more.

Integral z-squared dz
from 1 to the cube root of 3
times the cosine
of three pi over 9
equals log of the cube root of 'e'.

My dearest wife,

We have been married for nearly thirty years, and I still love you as much as on the day I proposed. You must realize, however, that you are now 54 years old and no longer able to satisfy certain needs I still have. I very much hope that you are not hurt to learn that, while you're reading this, I'm in a hotel room with an 18-year-old freshman girl from my calculus class. I'll be home before midnight.

Your husband, who will never stop loving you.

My beloved husband,

You may recall that you, too, are 54 years old and no longer able to satisfy certain needs I still have. I thus hope that you are not hurt to learn that, while your're reading this, I am in a hotel room with the 18-year-old pool boy.

Your loving wife.

P.S. As a mathematician, you are certainly aware of the fact that 18 goes into 54 many more times than 54 goes into 18. Therefore, don't stay up and wait for me.

100 Buckets of bits on the bus, 100 buckets of bits. Take one down, short it to ground, FF buckets of bits on the bus.

• talk, date, join, head, tail, split
• unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; umount; sleep

Every new scientist must learn early that it is never good taste to
designate the sum of two quantities in the form:

                1 + 1 = 2                                               (1)

Anyone who has made a study of advanced mathematics is aware that:
        1 = ln e
        1 = sin^2 x + cos^2 x

            inf
        2 = sum     1/2^n
            n=0

Therefore eq. (1) can be expressed more scientifically as:


                             inf
ln e + sin^2 x + cos^2 x =   sum     1/2^n                              (2)
                             n=0


This may be further simplified by use of the relations:

        1 = cosh y sqrt(1 - tanh^2 y)
        e = lim     (1+1/z)^z
            z-> inf

Equation (2) may therefore be rewritten as:

                                           inf  cosh y sqrt(1 - tanh^2 y)
ln[ lim (1+1/z)^z ] + sin^2 x + cos^2 x =  SUM  ____________________________
    z-> inf                                n=0             2^n

                                                                        (3)

At this point it should be obvious that eq. (3) is much clearer and more
easily understood than eq. (1). Other methods of a similar nature could be
used to clarify eq. (1), but these are easily divined once the reader
grasps the underlying principles.

• Problem from a 1950s textbook: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100.00. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?
• From a 1960s textbook: a logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?
• From a 1970s textbook: logger exchanges a set of L of lumber for a set M of money. The cardinality of set M is 100. Each element is worth one dollar. Make 100 dots representing the elements of set M. Represent the set C as a subset of M and P, the profits, as a union of M and not C. What is the cardinality of P? From a 1980s textbook: a logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. Her cost of production is $80 and her profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.
• From a 1990 textbook: By cutting down a beautiful forest, the logger makes $20. What do you thinks about this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the forest birds and animal feel as the logger cuts down the trees? (There are no wrong answers)
• From a 1996 textbook: By laying off 40% of its loggers, a company improves its stock price from $80 to $100. How much capital gain per share does the CEO make by exercising his stock options at $80? Assume capital gains are no longer taxed, because this encourages investment.
• From a 1997 textbook: a company outsources all its loggers. The firm saves on benefits, and when the demand for its product is down, the logging workforce can be easily cut back. The average logger employed by the company earned $50,000, had three weeks paid holiday, a nice retirement plan and medical insurance. The contracted logger charges $50 an hour. Was the outsourcing a good move?
• From a 1998 textbook: a laid off logger with four kids at home and a ridiculous alimony from his first failed marriage comes into the logging company corporate offices and goes berserk, mowing down 16 executives and a couple of secretaries, and gets lucky when he nails a politician collecting his kickback. Was the outsourcing of loggers a good move for the company?
• From a 1999 textbook: A laid off logger serving time in a high security jail for blowing away several people is being trained as a COBOL programmer in order to work on Y2K projects. What is the probability that the cell doors will open on their own at 00:00:01 01/01/2000?

• Combinatorists do it as many ways as they can.
• Combinatorists do it discretely.
• (Logicians do it) or [not (logicians do it)].
• Logicians do it by symbolic manipulation.
• Algebraists do it in groups.
• Algebraists do it in a ring.
• Algebraists do it in a field.
• Analysts do it continuously.
• Real analysts do it almost everywhere.
• Pure mathematicians do it rigorously.
• Topologists do it openly.
• Topologists do it on rubber sheets.
• Dynamicists do it chaotically.
• Mathematicians do it forever if they can do one and can do one more.
• Cantor did it diagonally.
• Fermat tried to do it in the margin, but couldn't fit it in.
• Galois did it the night before.
• Möbius always does it on the same side.
• Markov does it in chains.
• Newton did it standing on the shoulders of giants.
• Turing did it but couldn't decide if he'd finished.

• Life is complex. It has real and imaginary components.
• What keeps a square from moving? Square roots, of course.
• The law of the excluded middle either rules or does not rule.
• In the topological hell the beer is packed in Klein's bottles.
• To a mathematician, real life is a special case.
• I heard that parallel lines actually do meet, but they are very discrete.
• In modern mathematics, algebra has become so important that numbers will soon only have symbolic meaning.
• Some say the pope is the greatest cardinal. But others insist this cannot be so, as every pope has a successor.

• Clearly: I don't want to write down all the "in-between" steps.
• Trivial: If I have to show you how to do this, you're in the wrong class.
• It can easily be shown: No more than four hours are needed to prove it.
• Check for yourself: This is the boring part of the proof, so you can do it on your own time.
• Hint: The hardest of several possible ways to do a proof.
• Brute force: Four special cases, three counting arguments and two long inductions.
• Elegant proof: Requires no previous knowledge of the subject matter and is less than ten lines long.
• Similarly: At least one line of the proof of this case is the same as before.
• Two line proof: I'll leave out everything but the conclusion, you can't question 'em if you can't see 'em.
• Briefly: I'm running out of time, so I'll just write and talk faster.
• Proceed formally: Manipulate symbols by the rules without any hint of their true meaning.
• Proof omitted: Trust me, It's true.

Some Mathie pick-up lines:

• "Wanna see the magnitude of my vector?"
• "The limit as I approach you is 69."
• "You fascinate me more than the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. "
• " Let's convert our potential energy to kinetic energy. "
• "Why don't we measure the coefficient of static friction between you and me? "
• "Isn't your e-mail address beautifulgirl@mydreams.com "
• "Since distance equals velocity times time, let's let velocity and time approach infinity, because I want to go all the way with you."
• "My love for you is like a concave up function because it is always increasing."
• "You and I would add up better than a Riemann sum."
• "I'd like to demonstrate with you simple harmonic motion."
• "Is your delta big enough to satisfy my epsilon?"
• "Nice set of parabolas!"