Contribute something interesting then!
I'm out of interesting puzzles, and I don't know enough QFT to debate string theory.
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Anonymous2009-01-25 0:11
*sigh*
Copypasta tiem then I think:
A mathematician, a physicist, an engineer went again to the races and laid their money down. Commiserating in the bar after the race, the engineer says, "I don't understand why I lost all my money. I measured all the horses and calculated their strength and mechanical advantage and figured out how fast they could run..."
The physicist interrupted him: "...but you didn't take individual variations into account. I did a statistical analysis of their previous performances and bet on the horses with the highest probability of winning..."
"...so if you're so hot why are you broke?" asked the engineer. But before the argument can grow, the mathematician takes out his pipe and they get a glimpse of his well-fattened wallet. Obviously here was a man who knows something about horses. They both demanded to know his secret.
"Well," he says, "first I assumed all the horses were identical and spherical..."
A physicist and a mathematician are sitting in a faculty lounge. Suddenly, the coffee machine catches on fire. The physicist grabs a bucket and leap towards the sink, filled the bucket with water and puts out the fire. Second day, the same two sit in the same lounge. Again, the coffee machine catches on fire. This time, the mathematician stands up, got a bucket, hands the bucket to the physicist, thus reducing the problem to a previously solved one.
A biologist, a physicist and a mathematician were sitting in a street cafe watching the crowd. Across the street they saw a man and a woman entering a building. Ten minutes they reappeared together with a third person.
- They have multiplied, said the biologist.
- Oh no, an error in measurement, the physicist sighed.
- If exactly one person enters the building now, it will be empty again, the mathematician concluded.
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Anonymous2009-01-25 0:14
An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician were asked to hammer a nail into a wall.
The engineer went to build a Universal Automatic Nailer -- a device able to hammer every possible nail into every possible wall.
The physicist conducted series of experiments on strength of hammers, nails, and walls and developed a revolutionary technology of ultra-sonic nail hammering at super-low temperature.
The mathematician generalized the problem to a N dimensional problem of penetration of a knotted one dimensional nail into a N-1 dimensional hyper-wall. Several fundamental theorems are proved. Of course, the problem is too rich to suggest a possibility of a simple solution, even the existence of a solution is far from obvious.
A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were traveling through Scotland when they saw a black sheep through the window of the train.
"Aha," says the engineer, "I see that Scottish sheep are black."
"Hmm," says the physicist, "You mean that some Scottish sheep are black."
"No," says the mathematician, "All we know is that there is at least one sheep in Scotland, and that at least one side of that one sheep is black!"
One day a farmer called up an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician and asked them to fence of the largest possible area with the least amount of fence.
The engineer made the fence in a circle and proclaimed that he had the most efficient design.
The physicist made a long, straight line and proclaimed "We can assume the length is infinite..." and pointed out that fencing off half of the Earth was certainly a more efficient way to do it.
The Mathematician just laughed at them. He built a tiny fence around himself and said "I declare myself to be on the outside."
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Anonymous2009-01-25 0:17
The physicist and the engineer are in a hot-air balloon. Soon, they find themselves lost in a canyon somewhere. They yell out for help: "Helllloooooo! Where are we?"
15 minutes later, they hear an echoing voice: "Helllloooooo! You're in a hot-air balloon!!"
The physicist says, "That must have been a mathematician."
The engineer asks, "Why do you say that?"
The physicist replied: "The answer was absolutely correct, and it was utterly useless."
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An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt already heard. After some observations and rough calculations the engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing. A few minutes later the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper.
This leaves the mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of humor from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.
A mathematician organizes a lottery in which the prize is an infinite amount of money. When the winning ticket is drawn, and the jubilant winner comes to claim his prize, the mathematician explains the mode of payment: "1 dollar now, 1/2 dollar next week, 1/3 dollar the week after that..."
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Anonymous2009-01-25 0:20
A mathematician decides he wants to learn more about practical problems. He sees a seminar with a nice title: "The Theory of Gears." So he goes. The speaker stands up and begins, "The theory of gears with a real number of teeth is well known ..."
Top ten excuses for not doing homework:
# I accidentally divided by zero and my paper burst into flames.
# Isaac Newton's birthday.
# I could only get arbitrarily close to my textbook. I couldn't actually reach it.
# I have the proof, but there isn't room to write it in this margin.
# I was watching the World Series and got tied up trying to prove that it converged.
# I have a solar powered calculator and it was cloudy.
# I locked the paper in my trunk but a four-dimensional dog got in and ate it.
# I couldn't figure out whether i am the square of negative one or i is the square root of negative one.
# I took time out to snack on a doughnut and a cup of coffee.
# I spent the rest of the night trying to figure which one to dunk.
# I could have sworn I put the homework inside a Klein bottle, but this morning I couldn't find it.
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Anonymous2009-01-25 0:26
The following is a guide to terms which are commonly used but rarely defined. In the search for proper definitions for these terms we found no authoritative, nor even recognized, source. Thus, we followed the advice of mathematicians handed down from time immortal: "Wing It."
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.
IT CAN EASILY BE SHOWN:
Even you, in your finite wisdom, should be able to prove this without me holding your hand.
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.
BRUTE FORCE (AND IGNORANCE):
Four special cases, three counting arguments, two long inductions, "and a partridge in a pair tree."
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.
TFAE (The Following Are Equivalent):
If I say this it means that, and if I say that it means the other thing, and if I say the other thing...
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 (Popular in applied math courses).
PROOF OMITTED:
Trust me, It's true.
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Anonymous2009-01-25 0:35
Cat 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.
A constant function and e^x are walking on Broadway. Then suddenly the constant function sees a differential operator approaching and runs away. So e^x follows him and asks why the hurry. "Well, you see, there's this differential operator coming this way, and when we meet, he'll differentiate me and nothing will be left of me...!" "Ah," says e^x, "he won't bother ME, I'm e to the x!" and he walks on. Of course he meets the differential operator after a short distance.
e^x: "Hi, I'm e^x"
diff.op.: "Hi, I'm d/dy"
Q: Why do Computer Scientists get Halloween and Christmas mixed up?
A: Because Oct. 31 = Dec. 25.
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Anonymous2009-01-25 0:40
How many Bourbakists does it take to replace a lightbulb: ?
Changing a lightbulb is a special case of a more general theorem concerning the maintain and repair of an electrical system. To establish upper and lower bounds for the number of personnel required, we must determine whether the sufficient conditions of Lemma 2.1 (Availability of personnel) and those of Corollary 2.3.55 (Motivation of personnel) apply. Iff these conditions are met, we derive the result by an application of the theorems in Section 3.1123. The resulting upper bound is, of course, a result in an abstract measure space, in the weak-* topology.
Q: Why didn't Newton discover group theory?
A: Because he wasn't Abel.
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Anonymous2009-01-25 0:46
A famous mathematician was to give a keynote speech at a conference. Asked for an advance summary, he said he would present a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem -- but they should keep it under their hats. When he arrived, though, he spoke on a much more prosaic topic. Afterwards the conference organizers asked why he said he'd talk about the theorem and then didn't. He replied this was his standard practice, just in case he was killed on the way to the conference.
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Anonymous2009-01-25 0:47
Q: Why do Computer Scientists get Halloween and Christmas mixed up?
A: Because Oct. 31 = Dec. 25. ""
MIND = BLOWN
MIND = BLOWN
MIND = BLOWN
MIND = BLOWN
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Anonymous2009-01-25 4:49
An infinite amount of mathematicians walk into a bar.
The first orders a Pint of Beer. The second orders half a pint of beer. The Third orders a quarter of a pint of beer. At this point, the bartender says "Youre all idiots" And pours two pints of beer.
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Anonymous2009-01-25 5:48
Q: Why didn't Newton discover group theory? A: Because he wasn't Abel.
*cringes*
>>10
I remember reading somewhere that something like this actually happened, but it was a proof of the Riemann hypothesis. The guy was really sick out at sea & he thought for sure he would die. Could be fiction though, I can't come up with a source.
I think it's that there is no perfect systematic way to approach betting on horses. The mathematician simply didn't use any physics or engineering and that turned out to be best method because all he did was guess. Yeah, I'm kind of at a loss for why it's funny though.