- A pastor, a doctor, and a mathematician were playing a Saturday morning round of golf together. When the greenskeeper saw that the threesome was perturbed by a particularly slow foursome ahead of them, he came over to offer an explanation. "The four players in front of you are blind former firefighters," he said. "Several years ago, a fire started in our clubhouse, and these four were able to put it out. Unfortunately, in doing so, they all were injured and lost their sight. In recognition of their bravery, we invite them to play a free round once a year."
"That's terrible!" said the pastor. "I will say some prayers for them in the hope that their eyesight improves."
"How awful!" said the doctor. "I will speak to my opthamologist friends and see if they have any suggestions on how to restore their vision."
"Hmmmm," said the mathematician, "The situation is unfortunate, but why don't you just ask them to play at night?"
- Three professors, a historian, a chemist, and a mathematician, were all staying
at the same hotel while attending different conventions. One night, after they
retired to their separate rooms, the historian woke up and saw a fire burning
in the trash can. Immediately, he ran to the sink, filled the ice bucket with
water, doused the flames, and went back to bed. Later that night, the chemist
woke up and found a fire in his trash can. He got out of bed, ran to the sink,
and whipped out a graduated cylinder. Making some quick calculations, he found
the exact amount of water necessary to extinguish the flames, measured the amount
(making sure, of course, to read at the bottom of the meniscus), put out the fire,
and went back to bed. Sure enough, just before morning, the mathematician awoke
and saw a fire in the trash can. He looked over at the sink, saw the ice bucket,
looked back at the fire and thought, “A solution exists!” Contentedly, he went
back to sleep.
- A chemist, a physicist, and a mathematician were riding north through Scotland on a train.
After looking through the window for a long time, the chemist said, "The
sheep in Scotland are black."
"No, no," replied the physicist , "I'm afraid that all we can conclude
from the data is that SOME of the sheep in Scotland are black."
"Ahh," said the mathematician, "not quite. The correct conclusion from
the data is only that, in Scotland, some of the sheep are black on AT
LEAST one side."
- A physicist, a chemist, and a mathematician were shipwrecked and washed up on a deserted island together. The only thing they had managed to save from the ship was a can of Spam. However, they had no means to open it.
After several days, they became quite hungry, and the physicist said, "By Newton's laws, if we throw a can down from the top of a tall tree, it should break open on impact." Unfortunately, after several tries, he was unable to get the can to open. "Hmm," said the physicist, "The trees here must not be tall enough."
"Well," said the chemist, "If we put the can in the ocean, the salt water should dissolve it open." However, after several days of being submerged in the salt water, the can's appearance had barely changed. "Well," admitted the chemist, "It might take several years."
In desperation, the two starving scientists turned to the mathematician and asked, "Do you have any idea how to open the can?"
"Of course," said the mathematician. "I thought you'd never ask: First, suppose that we have a can opener..."
- Question: What is the difference between an introverted mathematician and an extroverted
mathematician?
Answer: An introverted mathematician stares at his own feet while talking to you,
while an extroverted one stares at your feet.
- A chemist's proof that all odd numbers are prime: 1 is special; 3 is prime; 5 is prime; 7 is prime; 9 is... uh, 9 is an
experimental error; 11 is prime; 13 is prime... Well, that's a representative sample.
- Person A and Person B were introduced to each other at a party. Upon learning that
Person A was a mathematician, Person B said, "Oh, I've heard that mathematicians are
difficult to get along with." To this, Person A immediately replied, "Certainly not!
In fact, I have this friend who is both a mathematician and very easy to get along with.
He is so easy going that he has hundreds of friends, and he never gets into arguments.
Thus, by this counterexample, we see that your assertion that mathematicians are difficult
to get along with is utterly false."
- A man who was living in a country ruled by a cruel dictator was unfairly arrested,
blindfolded, and transported to a prison. Once there, he discovered that his cellmate was
a mathematician. After a few days, the man managed to escape from the prison. Unfortunately,
the prison was located in the middle of a burning desert, hundreds of miles away from the nearest
inhabited regions. After stumbling around in the desert for days, the man was recaptured and moved
back to his jail cell. When his cellmate saw him return, he told him, "I could have told you that
escaping by foot was impossible. I tried the same thing two months ago." At this, the now sunburned,
parched, and hungry man became very upset and exclaimed, "Why didn't you tell me that sooner!" The
mathematician simply shrugged his shoulders and asked, "Who publishes negative results?"
On a related note: "We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific
journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up
all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe
how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn't any
place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did
in order to get to do the work."
--Richard Feynman, Nobel Lecture, 1966
- A pure mathematician grew tired of proving results about abstract nonsense, and resolved to move into applied mathematics. One day, he saw an announcement for a seminar on the "theory of gears." "What could be more useful than gears?" he thought, and he resolved to attend. At the first session, the speaker started his remarks by observing that, "As everyone knows, the theory of gears with a real number of teeth is already well understood..."
- A mathematician is someone who can begin a sentence with, "As everyone knows," and then finish it with something he just learned.
- There is a direct correlation between the number of firefighters sent to fight a fire and the amount of damage caused by the fire. (In other words: Stop global warming! Bring back the ninjas.)
A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.
--Charles R. Darwin
Never trust any quote you find on the internet.
--A. Lincoln, SecondInaugural Address