Math Jokes

Math Jokes! I have heard so many math jokes lately that I have started telling them myself. So I thought I would share some that I thought were funny (or at least entertaining).

Theorem: a cat has nine tails.

Proof:

No cat has eight tails. A cat has one tail more than no cat. Therefore, a cat has nine tails.

Two people are traveling in a balloon over unknown territory.

     "Hey!" they call out to a passerby, "where are we?"

     The person looks carefully for a moment at them and yells back, "You're in a balloon!"

     "He must be a mathematician," says one of the travelers to the other.

     "Why is that?" asks the other.

     "First, he thought awhile before answering. Second, his answer is absolutely precise. And third, it's utterly useless."

If it's zero degrees outside today and it's supposed to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be?

Many cultures, in their early mathematical development, discovered the equation 2 + 2 = 5. For example, consider the Bolb tribe, descended from the Incas of South America. The Bolbs counted by tying knots in ropes. They quickly realized that when a 2-knot rope is put together with another 2-knot rope, a 5-knot rope results. (This is part is not a joke.)

An engineer thinks that his equations are an approximation to reality. A physicist thinks reality is an approximation to his equations. A mathematician doesn't care.

One evening Rene Descartes went to relax at a local tavern. The tender approached and said, "Ah, good evening Monsieur Descartes! Shall I serve you the usual drink?". Descartes replied, "I think not.", and promptly vanished.

Classification of mathematical problems as linear and nonlinear is like classification of the Universe as bananas and non-bananas. 

The actual quote from the Webster dictionary: 

trillion n 

syn SCAD, gob(s), heap, jillion, load(s), million, oodles, quantities, thousand, wad(s) 

Dictionary of Definitions of Terms Commonly Used in Math. lectures.

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.

OBVIOUSLY:

I hope you weren't sleeping when we discussed this earlier, because I refuse to repeat it.

RECALL:

I shouldn't have to tell you this, but for those of you who erase your memory tapes after every test...

WLOG (Without Loss Of Generality):

I'm not about to do all the possible cases, so I'll do one and let you figure out the rest.

CHECK or CHECK FOR YOURSELF:

This is the boring part of the proof, so you can do it on your own time.

SKETCH OF A PROOF:

I couldn't verify all the details, so I'll break it down into the parts I couldn't prove.

HINT:

The hardest of several possible ways to do a proof.

SOFT PROOF:

One third less filling (of the page) than your regular proof, but it requires two extra years of course work just to understand the terms.

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.

CANONICAL FORM:

4 out of 5 mathematicians surveyed recommended this as the final form for their students who choose to finish.

BY A PREVIOUS THEOREM:

I don't remember how it goes (come to think of it I'm not really sure we did this at all), but if I stated it right (or at all), then the rest of this follows.

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.

LET'S TALK THROUGH IT:

I don't want to write it on the board lest I make a mistake.

PROCEED FORMALLY:

Manipulate symbols by the rules without any hint of their true meaning (popular in pure math courses).

QUANTIFY:

I can't find anything wrong with your proof except that it won't work if x is a moon of Jupiter.

PROOF OMITTED:

Trust me, It's true.

Math problems? Call 1-800-[(10x)(13i)2]-[sin(xy)/2.362x].