Despite what people may think, Mathematics is full of opportunities for humour. Here is a collection of jokes and puns I have had the pleasure of hearing. Many of them are reproduced from the wonderful collection by Zev Chonoles, but as his original website no longer exists, they are reproduced here.
Short Jokes/Puns
- Let $X$ be a set. Call it $Y$.
- With massive loss of generality, let $n=5$.
- A comathematician is a device for turning cotheorems into ffee.
- How do you prove a cotheorem? Using rollaries.
- Quadratic Reciprocity: $\left(\frac{p}{q}\right) = \left(\frac{q}{p}\right)$, up to sign.
- $0 \to A \to B \to C \to 0$. Exactly!
- Let $\epsilon \to 0$. There goes the neighborhood!
- Take a positive integer $N$. No wait, $N$ is too big; take a positive integer $k$.
- All metric spaces are Hausdorff – he’s the only one.
- Calculus has limits.
- There’s a fine line between numerator and denominator.
- Without Geometry, life is pointless.
- Think globally, act locally.
- Natural numbers are better for your health.
- There’s a marked difference between a ruler and a straightedge.
- Statistics means never having to say you’re certain.
- When the law of averages no longer applies, life will lose all meaning.
- Suppose there were no empty set. Then consider the set of all empty sets.
- Q: What do you get when you cross a chicken with an elephant?
A: The trivial elephant bundle on a chicken. - Q: What’s green and really far away?
A: The lime at infinity. - Q: What’s an anagram of “Banach-Tarski”?
A: Banach-Tarski Banach-Tarski - Q: Why is it an insult to call someone “abelian”?
A: It means they only have a 1-dimensional character and are self-centered. - Q: What’s a polar bear?
A: A rectangular bear after a coordinate transformation. - Q: Why did the vector cross the road?
A: It wanted to be normal. - Old Macdonald had a form, $e_i \wedge e_i = 0$.
- Professor: Are $\mathbb{Z}/4\mathbb{Z}$ and $\mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z} \times \mathbb{Z}/2\mathbb{Z}$ isomorphic?
Student: The first one is, but the second one isn’t. - $\aleph_0$ bottles of beer on the wall,
$\aleph_0$ bottles of beer.
You take one down, and pass it around,
$\aleph_0$ bottles of beer on the wall. - A logician rides in an elevator. The door opens and someone asks, “Are you going up or down?”
“Yes.” - Dry erase boards are remarkable.
- Algebra parties are math functions.
- Trig functions are quite photogenic, they know how to work their angles.
- Thinking about opening up a gym called “Math Class.” There’s strength in numbers.
- Doing trigonometry outside on a sunny day may lead to tan lines.
- Kontsevich always preferred doing his Mathematics in warmer weather. I guess you could say he was into Tropical Geometry.
- I tried to ask a question at the Topology conference, but the speaker asked, “Can you knot?”
- Noticing the stuff left on a desk, the professor asked, “Who left their geometry stuff behind?” Another student said, “Oh, I know who’s stuff that is.” “How can you tell?”, asked the professor. “That’s Lefschetz pencil.”
- If the IRS had discovered the quadratic formula…, by Daniel Velleman
- Mathematical Proficiency Exam, by Isaac Solomon
- Any Tom Lehrer song. [Try searching ‘Tom Lehrer’ in YouTube.]
- The proof is trivial!
Longer Jokes
- A rancher hires an engineer, physicist, and mathematician to minimize the cost a sheep pen. The engineer determines that this can be done if the sheep are first herded into circular shape. The physicist determines that no matter what, there must be a minimum cost by building an infinite circular fence, and shrinking it until it properly encloses the flock. The mathematician simply throws a few feet of fence around them and declares that they are on the outside.
- Dear Committee Members: Thanks for your letter of March 30. After careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your rejection at this time. This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually large number of rejection letters. With such a varied and promising field of schools, it is impossible for me to accept all refusals. Despite your outstanding record and previous experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet my current career needs. Consequently, I will begin taking classes as a graduate student in your department this August. I look forward to seeing you then. Best of luck in rejecting future applicants. Sincerely Yours,
[Name Withheld] - A psychiatrists gives a mental acuity test to a physicist, engineer, and a mathematician. The psychiatrist asks, “If you had an apartment without a kitchen, how could you make pasta?” All three answer essentially the same: you could buy a hot plate, place it in your leaving room, then bring water to a boil on it to cook the pasta. The psychiatrist then asks, “Well, what if you had a kitchen? How would you cook pasta?” The physicist and engineer answer nearly in unison, “You can go into the kitchen, place a pot on the stove filled with water, bring it to a boil, then cook the pasta.” The psychiatrist turns to the mathematician, “And what would you do?” The mathematician responds, “I would go into the living room. I’ve already solved the problem there.”
- A chemist, physicist, and a mathematician are at a hibachi. Suddenly, some fat on the grill catches fire and sets their table on fire. The chemist says, “The hydrogen from the fat carbon chains are releasing energy, causing the fire. We need something to dissolve the fat, and hence remove the fuel!” The physicist says, “No, the reaction is occurring because of the release of energy from the carbon chains with oxygen. Using a fire extinguisher, we can reduce the percentage of oxygen available to the flames and put it out!” The statistician stands up and shouts, “WE NEED MORE DATA!”, and then lights a different table on fire.
- An engineer, physicist, and mathematician are riding a train through the Colorado Mountains. The engineer looks out the window and sees a black cow. The engineer turns to the others and exclaims, “Look! All the cows are black in Colorado!” The physicist turns and says, “No, but there is at least one black cow in Colorado.” “Actually”, the mathematician interjects, “we can only say there is at least one cow with one black side in Colorado, assuming that is a cow.”
- An engineer, chemist, and mathematician are working during a thunderstorm. Lightening strikes a power line, causing their desk lamp bulbs to burst, setting their papers aflame. The engineer Googles the problem and finds that this problem has happened before, and that a fire extinguisher solves the problem. The engineer is quickly able to put out the fire. The chemist looks at the flames and thinks, “Fire burns through a reaction between the paper molecules and oxygen, assuming sufficient heat energy to initiate the process. A smothering agent would prevent the reaction with oxygen.” The chemist determines that a fire extinguisher would suffice to stop the reaction, and is quickly able to put out the flames. The mathematician examines the flames and ponders for a few moments. The mathematician shouts, “Eukra! There is a solution to this problem.” Then the mathematician turns and goes back to work.
- A poet, a priest, and a mathematician are discussing whether it’s better to have a spouse or a lover. The poet argues that it’s better to have a lover because love should be free and spontaneous. The priest argues that it’s better to have a spouse because love should be sanctified by God. The mathematician says, “I think it’s better to have both. That way, when each of them thinks you’re with the other, you can sit down and do some mathematics.”