The flood is over and the ark has landed. "Go forth and multiply," Noah
tells the animals.
A few months later, he decides to take a stroll and see how the animals are
doing. Everywhere he looks he finds baby animals. Everyone is doing fine
except for one pair of little snakes. "Please, Noah," say the snakes, "we need
you to cut down some trees for us."
"No problem," says Noah. He cuts down a few trees and goes home scratching
his head. A few weeks later he gets curious and come back to check on the
snakes. They now have lots of little snakes and everyone is happy. "What
happened?" he asks them.
"We are adders," the snakes explain. "So we need logs to multiply."
What do you get when you cross an elephant and a goat?
What do you get when you cross a tsetse fly and a mountain climber?
nothing.... a mountain climber is a scalar
A Mathematician and an Engineer attend a lecture by a Physicist. The
topic concerns Kulza-Klein theories involving physical processes that occur
in spaces with dimensions of 9, 12 and even higher. The Mathematician is sitting, clearly enjoying the lecture, while the Engineer is frowning and looking generally confused and puzzled. By the end the Engineer has a terrible headache. At the end, the Mathematician comments about the wonderful lecture.
The Engineer says "How do you understand this stuff?"
Mathematician: "I just visualize the process"
Engineer: "How can you POSSIBLY visualize something that occurs in 9-dimensional
Mathematician: "Easy, first visualize it in N-dimensional space, then let N go to 9"
Three men are in a hot-air balloon. Soon, they find themselves lost in a
canyon somewhere. One of the three men says, "I've got an idea. We can call
for help in this canyon and the echo will carry our voices far."
So he leans over the basket and yells out, "Helllloooooo! Where are we?"
(They hear the echo several times).
15 minutes later, they hear this echoing voice: "Helllloooooo! You're
One of the men says, "That must have been a mathematician." Puzzled, one of
the other men asks, "Why do you say that?" The reply: "For three reasons.
(1) he took a long time to answer, (2) he was absolutely correct, and (3)
his answer was absolutely useless."
Q: What's the contour integral around Western Europe?
A: Zero, because all the Poles are in Eastern Europe!
Addendum: Actually, there ARE some Poles in Western Europe, but they are removable!
Q: Why can't you grow wheat in Z/6Z ?
A: Because it's not a field.
Q: What did the circle say to the tangent line?
A: "Stop touching me!"
Some say the pope is the greatest cardinal.
But others insist this cannot be so, as every pope has a successor.
An English mathematician was asked by his very religious colleague:
Do you believe in one God?
Answer: Yes, up to isomorphism!
The shortest math joke ever:
Let epsilon be less than 0
The shortest math book: An Unabridged List of the Even Primes
The oldest topologist joke:
A topologist is a person who doesn't know the difference between a coffee cup and a doughnut.
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 to the 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"
All positive integers are interesting.
Assume the contrary. Then there is a lowest non-interesting positive
integer. But, hey, that's pretty interesting! A contradiction.
All prime numbers are odd.
Clearly all prime numbers greater than 2 are odd. What about 2? Well, it is the oddest of them all! Therefore, all prime numbers are odd.
A mathematician is a person who says that, when 3 people are supposed to be in
a room but 5 came out, 2 more have to go in so the room gets empty...
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them, they translate it into their own language, and forthwith it means something entirely different.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe