The mad scientist
There was a mad scientist ( a mad …social… scientist ) who kidnapped three colleagues, an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician, and locked each of them in seperate cells with plenty of canned food and water but no can opener.
A month later, returning, the mad scientist went to the engineer’s cell and found it long empty. The engineer had constructed a can opener from pocket trash, used aluminum shavings and dried sugar to make an explosive, and escaped.
The physicist had worked out the angle necessary to knock the lids off the tin cans by throwing them against the wall. She was developing a good pitching arm and a new quantum theory.
The mathematician had stacked the unopened cans into a surprising solution to the kissing problem; his dessicated corpse was propped calmly against a wall, and this was inscribed on the floor in blood:
Theorem: If I can’t open these cans, I’ll die.
Q & A
Q: What’s purple and commutes?
A: An abelian grape.
Q: What’s yellow, and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice?
A: Zorn’s Lemon.
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.
Erdos and Lax
“A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems” — P. Erdos
Three standard Peter Lax jokes (heard in his lectures) :
1. What’s the contour integral around Western Europe? Answer: Zero, because all the Poles are in Eastern Europe! Addendum: Actually, there ARE some Poles in Western Europe, but they are removable!
2. An English mathematician (I forgot who) was asked by his very religious colleague: Do you believe in one God? Answer: Yes, up to isomorphism!
3. What is a compact city? It’s a city that can be guarded by finitely many near-sighted policemen!
The engineer, the physicist,and the mathematician.
Three employees of NOSC (an engineer, a physicist and a mathematician) are staying in a hotel while attending a technical seminar. The engineer wakes up and smells smoke. He goes out into the hallway and sees a fire, so he fills a trashcan from his room with water and douses the fire. He goes back to bed. Later, the physicist wakes up and smells smoke. He opens his door and sees a fire in the hallway. He walks down the hall to a fire hose and after calculating the flame velocity, distance, water pressure, trajectory, etc. extinguishes the fire with the minimum amount of water and energy needed. Later, the mathematician wakes up and smells smoke. He goes to the hall, sees the fire and then the fire hose. He thinks for a moment and then exclaims, “Ah, a solution exists!” and then goes back to bed.
The mathematician,the physicist and the biologist.
A Mathematician, a Biologist and a Physicist are sitting in a street cafe watching people going in and coming out of the house on the other side of the street. First they see two people going into the house. Time passes. After a while they notice three persons coming out of the house. The Physicist says: “The measurement wasn’t accurate.” The Biologist concludes: “They have reproduced.” The Mathematician says: “Now if another person enters the house, it’ll be empty again.”
