An Engineer, A Physicist And A Mathematician Find Themselves In An
Anecdote, Indeed An Anecdote Quite Similar To Many That You Have No Doubt
Already Heard.
An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an
anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt
already heard. After some observations and rough calculations the
engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing. A few minutes later
the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now
has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper. This leaves the
mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he
was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of
humour from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too
trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.
ivial adj.
1. Too simple to bother detailing. 2. Not
worth the speaker's time. 3. Complex, but solvable by methods so
well known that anyone not utterly cretinous would have
thought of them already....
