ProofWiki:Jokes

0.999...=1

 * Q: How many mathematicians does it take to change a lightbulb?
 * A: 0.999999 ...

Banach-Tarski Paradox

 * Q: Give me an anagram of Banach-Tarski.
 * A: Banach-Tarski Banach-Tarski.

Educational Standards
Two captains of industry, Arthur and George, were in a restaurant discussing the state of educational standards, particularly in the field of mathematics. Arthur was convinced they were slipping badly, and that your average college student was completely mathematically illiterate. George, on the other hand, was confident that any student would at least know the basics of calculus.

"I bet you twenty bucks," said Arthur, "that if you were to ask a random college student a basic question in calculus, he wouldn't understand the question, let alone furnish you with an answer."

"I'll think about that," said George. "Not sure whether to take you up on your bet or not, but I reckon you'd be wrong."

Arthur slipped off to the mens' room at that point, and while he was gone, George called over the waitress Jody. (He knew that was her name because it was written on a badge pinned to her uniform. This appears to be a custom in certain chain diners.)

"I'd like you to help settle a wager between me and my colleague," he said. "When he comes back, I'm going to call you over, and ask you a question, to which you are to answer: one third x cubed."

"Wuntur dex cue?"

"One third x cubed."

"One thurrd ex cuebd."

"That's it, one third x cubed."

"One third ... x cubed."

"That's it, perfect. There's a good tip in it for you."

Arthur returned. George said, "Yes, I think I will take you up on it. Twenty bucks says our waitress can answer such a question. Hey, Jody! What's the indefinite integral of x squared with respect to x?"

"One third x cubed," replied Jody, dutifully.

"You see?" said George, pocketing Arthur's twenty.

As Jody turned away, she called back over her shoulder, "Plus a constant."

Knot Theory

 * Student A: "What's your favourite area of mathematics?"
 * Student B: "Knot theory."
 * Student A: "Me neither."


 * : Knot Jokes and Pastimes (attributed to Martin Scharlemann)

Natural Numbers

 * Q: "Why do computer scientists have nine fingers?"
 * A: "Zero, one, two, three, four; five, six, seven, eight, nine."

Circle Geometry
The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.

He acquired his shape from too much pi.

Sufficiently Large
$1+1 = 3$, for sufficiently large values of $1$.

Number Bases
Why do mathematicians get Halloween and Christmas confused?

Because $\mathsf{Dec} \ 25$ equals $\mathsf{Oct} \ 31$.


 * : Halloween $=$ Christmas (but it's a considerably older joke than that.)

Computer Prayer

 * Our Program which art in Memory,
 * "Hello World!" be Thy Name.
 * Thy Operating System come, Thy Commands be done,
 * at the Printer as it is on the Screen.
 * Give us this day our Data Dump,
 * and forgive us our I/O Errors
 * as we backup those whose Files are faulty.
 * Lead us not into frustration, and deliver us from email
 * for Thine is the Algorithm, the Application, and the Solution,
 * looping forever and ever.


 * Return.

Average Number of Hands
Most people in the world have more than the average number of hands.