Proof By Intimidation
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A Horse has an infinite number of legs.
A horse has two legs in back and forelegs in front.
That makes six legs in total.
Six (an even number) legs is an odd number for a horse.
The only number that is both odd and even is infinity.
Therefore, a horse has an infinite number of legs.
It is said that Einstein had occasion
To prove an amazing equation:
"Let V be virginity
"Approaching infinity,
"And P be a constant: Persuasion."
"Now if V over U is inverted,
"And the square root of U is inserted
"P times into V,
"The result, QED,
"Is a relative," Einstein asserted.
How do you teach a girl MAthematics?
Add her to the bed, subtract he clothes, divide her legs and start
multiplying.
So a mathematician, an engineer, and a physicist are out hunting
together. They spy a *deer in the woods.
The physicist calculates the velocity of the deer and the effect of
gravity on the bullet, aims his rifle and fires. Alas, he misses;
the bullet passes three feet behind the deer. The deer bolts
some yards, but comes to a halt, still within sight of the trio.
"Shame you missed," comments the engineer, "but of course with an
ordinary gun, one would expect that." He then levels his special
deer-hunting gun, which he rigged together from an ordinary rifle,
a sextant, a compass, a barometer, and a bunch of flashing lights
which don't do anything but impress onlookers, and fires. Alas,
his bullet passes three feet in front of the deer, who by this
time wises up and vanishes for good.
"Well," says the physicist, "your contraption didn't get it either."
"What do you mean?" pipes up the mathematician. "Between the two
of you, that was a perfect shot!"
*How they knew it was a deer:
The physicist observed that it behaved in a deer-like manner, so
it must be a deer.
The mathematician asked the physicist what it was, thereby reducing
it to a previously solved problem.
The engineer was in the woods to hunt deer, therefore it was a deer.
A mathematician and a physicist were asked the following question:
Suppose you walked by a burning house and saw a hydrant and
a hose not connected to the hydrant. What would you do?
P: I would attach the hose to the hydrant, turn on the water, and put out
the fire.
M: I would attach the hose to the hydrant, turn on the water, and put out
the fire.
Then they were asked this question:
Suppose you walked by a house and saw a hose connected to
a hydrant. What would you do?
P: I would keep walking, as there is no problem to solve.
M: I would disconnect the hose from the hydrant and set the house on fire,
reducing the problem to a previously solved form.
A Mathemetician (M) and an Engineer (E) attend a lecture by a Physicist.
The topic concerns Kulza-Klein theories involving physical processes
that occur in spaces with dimensions of 9, 12 and even higher. The M
is sitting, clearly enjoying the lecture, while the E is frowning and
looking generally confused and puzzled. By the end the E has a terrible
headache. At the end, the M comments about the wonderful lecture. The
E says "How do you understand this stuff?"
M: "I just visualize the process"
E: "How can you POSSIBLY visualize somrthing that occurs in
9-dimensional space?"
M: "Easy, first visualize it in N-dimensional space, then let N go to
9"
There were once three acedimians, an engineer, a physicist, and a
mathematician visiting a small town for a conference. They found themselves
forced to share a room in one of the most dirty, dingy, and really low
quality hotels that they had ever seen. The room that the had was on the
third floor, and the nearest working bathroom was on the fourth.
Late that night, the engineer awoke, and decided to avail himself of the
lavatory facilities. Going up the stairs, he smelled smoke, and indeed, at
the end of the hall he saw a fire. Finding a hose on the wall, he turned it
on, ran down the hall, and extinguished the fire. He then visited the
bathroom, and returned to bed.
An hour later, the physicist awoke, and felt the call of nature. As he
went upstairs, he smelled smoke, and found that there was a fire. Finding
the hose, he whipped out his calculator, figured out the amount of water
needed to extinguish a fire of that size, calculated the flow rate of the
hose, turned it on for exactly 15.24 minutes, and extinguished the fire. He
then used the bathroom, and returned to bed.
Later still, the mathematician awoke and decided that he needed to use the
bathroom. Going upstairs, he too found the olbligatory smoke and fire.
Looking around in a panic, he found the fire hose. He then said, "Aha! A
solution exists!" And after using the bathroom, he returned to bed.
1)physicist and mathematician are given a task:
to boil some water in a tea pot. They are both
given empty tea pot.
So they both fill it up with water and then
put it on a stove and boil it.
Now the problem becomes more complicated:
The tea pot filled with water is standing
on the stove. The task is the same.
PHYSICIST: turns on a fire and heats the water.
MATHEMATICIAN: Pours out the water and the
problem is reduced to the previous one.
When considering the behaviour of a howitzer:
A mathematician will be able to calculate where the shell will land
A physicist will be able to explain how the shell gets there
An engineer will stand there and try to catch it
A group of Polish tourists is flying on a small airplane through
the Grand Canyon on a sightseeing tour. The tour guide anounces:
"On the right of the airplane, you can see the famous Bright Angle
Falls." The tourists leap out of their seats and crowd to the
windows on the right side. This causes a dynamic imbalance, and the
plane violently rolls to the side and crashes into the canyon wall.
All aboard are lost. The moral to this episode is: always keep your
poles off the right side of the plane.
Mrs. Johnson the elementary school math teacher was having children do
problems on the blackboard that day.
``Who would like to do the first problem, addition?''
No one raised their hand. She called on Tommy, and with some help he
finally got it right.
``Who would like to do the second problem, subtraction?''
Students hid their faces. She called on Mark, who got the problem but
there was some suspicion his girlfriend Lisa whispered it to him.
``Who would like to do the third problem, division?''
Now a low collective groan could be heard as everyone looked at nothing
in particular. The teacher called on Suzy, who got it right (she has been
known to hold back sometimes in front of her friends).
``Who would like to do the last problem, multiplication?''
Tim's hand shot up, surprising everyone in the room. Mrs. Johnson finally
gained her composure in the stunned silence. ``Why the enthusiasm, Tim?''
``God said to go fourth and multiply!''
A mathematician and a physicist agree to a psychological experiment. The
mathematician is put in a chair in a large empty room and a beautiful naked
woman is placed on a bed at the other end of the room. The psychologist
explains, "You are to remain in your chair. Every five minutes, I will
move your chair to a position halfway between its current location and the
woman on the bed." The mathematician looks at the psychologist in disgust.
"What? I'm not going to go through this. You know I'll never reach the
bed!" And he gets up and storms out. The psychologist makes a note on
his clipboard and ushers the physicist in. He explains the situation, and
the physicist's eyes light up and he starts drooling. The psychologist is
a bit confused. "Don't you realize that you'll never reach her?" The
physicist smiles and replied, "Of course! But I'll get close enough for
all practical purposes!"
Engineer, physicist and mathematican are asked to find the value of 2+2.
Engineer (after 3 minutes, with a slide rule): "The answer is precisely
3.9974."
Physicist (after 6 hours of experiments): "The value is approximately 4.002,
with an error of plus-or-minus 0.005."
Mathematician (after a week of calculation): "Well, I haven't found an answer
yet but I CAN prove that an answer exists."
Dean, to the physics department. "Why do I always have to give you guys so
much money, for laboratories and expensive equipment and stuff. Why couldn't
you be like the math department - all they need is money for pencils, paper and
waste-paper baskets. Or even better, like the philosophy department. All they
need are pencils and paper."
Engineer, physicist and mathematican are all challenged with a problem: to fry
an egg when there is a fire in the house. The engineer just grabs a huge
bucket of water and runs over to the fire, putting it out. The physicist
thinks for a long while, and then measures a precise amount of water into a
container. He takes it over to the fire, pours it on and with the last drop
the fire goes out. The mathematican pores over pencil and paper. After a few
minutes he goes "Aha! A solution exists!" and goes back to frying the egg.
Sequel: This time they are asked simply to fry an egg (no fire). The engineer
just does it, kludging along; the physicist calculates carefully and produces
a carefully cooked egg; and the mathematican lights a fire in the corner, and
says "I have reduced it to the previous problem."
Mummy snake to baby snakes: "Well, you're old enough now to survive in the real
world. So here are the facts of life. Go forth and multiply."
Little snakes: "But we can't, we're adders."
Mummy snake: "You can do it in logs."
Q: To what question is the answer "9W."
A: "Dr. Wiener, do you spell your name with a V?"
A somewhat advanced society has figured how to package basic
knowledge in pill form.
A student, needing some learning, goes to the pharmacy and asks
what kind of knowledge pills are available. The pharmacist says
"Here's a pill for English literature." The student takes the
pill and swallows it and has new knowledge about English
literature!
"What else do you have?" asks the student.
"Well, I have pills for art history, biology, and world history,"
replies the pharmacist.
The student asks for these, and swallows them and has new
knowledge about those subjects.
Then the student asks, "Do you have a pill for math?"
The pharmacist says "Wait just a moment", and goes back into the
storeroom and brings back a whopper of a pill and plunks it on
the counter.
"I have to take that huge pill for math?" inquires the student.
The pharmacist replied "Well, you know math always was a little
hard to swallow."
Q:What did the acorne say when it grew up?
A:Geomatry
Q. What does a mathematician do when he's constipated?
A. He works it out with a pencil.
"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems"
-- P. Erdos
Q: Why did the mathematician name his dog "Cauchy"?
A: Because he left a residue at every pole.
Q: Why is it that the more accuracy you demand from an interpolation
function, the more expensive it becomes to compute?
A: That's the Law of Spline Demand.
"Algebraic symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about."
Moebius always does it on the same side.
Heisenberg might have slept here.
There were two men trying to decide what to do for a living. They went to
see a counselor, and he decided that they had good problem solving skills.
He tried a test to narrow the area of specialty. He put each man in a room
with a stove, a table, and a pot of water on the table. He said "Boil the
water". Both men moved the pot from the table to the stove and turned on the
burner to boil the water. Next, he put them into a room with a stove, a table,
and a pot of water on the floor. Again, he said "Boil the water". The first
man put the pot on the stove and turned on the burner. The counselor told him
to be an Engineer, because he could solve each problem individually. The
second man moved the pot from the floor to the table, and then moved the
pot from the table to the stove and turned on the burner. The counselor
told him to be a mathematician because he reduced the problem to a previously
solved problem.
The great logician Betrand Russell (or was it A.N. Whitehead?)
once claimed that he could prove anything if given that 1+1=1.
So one day, some smarty-pants asked him, "Ok. Prove that
you're the Pope."
He thought for a while and proclaimed, "I am one. The Pope
is one. Therefore, the Pope and I are one."
THE STORY OF BABEL:
In the beginning there was only one kind of Mathematician, created by the
Great Mathamatical Spirit form the Book: the Topologist. And they grew to large
numbers and prospered.
One day they looked up in the heavens and desired to reach up as far as the
eye could see. So they set out in building a Mathematical edifice that was to
reach up as far as "up" went. Further and further up they went ... until one
night the edifice collapsed under the weight of paradox.
The following morning saw only rubble where there once was a huge structure
reaching to the heavens. One by one, the Mathematicians climbed out from under
the rubble. It was a miracle that nobody was killed; but when they began to
speak to one another, SUPRISE of all suprises! they could not understand each
other. They all spoke different languages. They all fought amongst themselves
and each went about their own way. To this day the Topologists remain the
original Mathematicians.
- adapted from an American Indian legend
of the Mound Of Babel
