A little glimpse of me.
An infinite number of mathematicians go into a bar. The first mathematician orders a beer. The second mathematician orders half a beer. The third mathematician orders a fourth of a beer. The fourth mathematician orders an eighth of a beer. The bartender says, "You guys are all idiots!" and pours them two beers.
Last night I taught my class about Cartesian coordinates and how to graph linear equations. The Cartesian coordinate system was invented by the French philosopher and mathematician, René Descartes.
That, of course, led me to this joke:
There was this magnificent mathematical horse. You could teach it arithmetic, which it learned with no difficulty, algebra was a breeze, it could even prove theorems in euclidean geometry, but when you tried to teach it analytic geometry, it would rear back on its hind legs, kick ferociously neigh loudly and make violent head motions in resistance.
The moral of this story is that you can't put Descartes before the horse.
On Thursday night I taught my class the Pythagorean Theorem. This formula, used for calculating lengths of sides of a right triangle, can be summed up by stating that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.
And here's a REAL groaner:
An Indian chief befriended a white man who had done much to help out his tribe. This white man had used his education to help the tribe build better wigwams, make more accurate bows, preserve food for longer periods of time, and find peaceful coexistence with the white settlers moving through their lands.
The chief esteemed this white man so much that he decided to let the white man take one of his three daughters as his wife. He told him that he could marry the daughter of his choice.
He brought his friend to a wigwam and opened the door. Inside, sitting on a cougar skin was the most beautiful Indian maiden that the white man had ever seen. He then took him to a second wigwam and opened the door. The white man was astonished to see a woman even MORE beautiful, sitting on a bear skin. In the third wigwam, sitting on a hippopotamus hide sat the ugliest woman this man had ever seen.
The chief then asked his friend who he wished to marry.
"The third," replied the white man.
"No, really. I will take no offense," replied the chief. "Choose ANY of my three daughters.
"I choose the third," maintained the white man.
"May I ask why?" questioned the confused chief.
"It's simple," replied the white man. "Everyone knows that the squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sum of the squaws of the other two hides."
On Tuesday, I taught the formula for the area of a circle. That led to my next bad math joke.
A hillbilly family scrimped and saved to send their smartest child to college. Nobody in this particular family had ever been to college before, and they hoped that this would be a new beginning for their family going forward. After his first semester at college, he returned home for a visit. His father, anxious to find out how his hard-earned money had been spent, asked his son what he had learned at college.
The son recited from memory the formula for the area of a circle: "The area of a circle is equal to pi-r-squared."
The father was livid. "You idiot! You've wasted my money! Everybody knows that pie are round!"
After a semester of teaching developmental math at Utah Valley State College, I've assembled a few bad math jokes. We're talking real groaners here. So now I've decided to tell them on my blog. When I tell one to my class, I'll post it here on the blog as well.
Last night was my first session with a new class. The poor kids got this one last night:
A contest was devised to determine whether mathematicians or physicists were smarter. A mathematician and a physicist would be given a set of practical problems to solve, each problem a little more difficult than the previous situation, and based on their behavior, they could determine the relative intelligence of the two.
The first situation consisted of a room with a bucket of water on a table and a fire in the corner. The physicist entered the room sized up the situation, picked up the bucket of water and used it to douse the flame. The mathematician entered the room and also picked up the bucket of water and used it to douse the flame.
The second situation consisted of a room with a sink in one corner, an empty bucket on a table, and a fire in another corner. The physicist entered the room, grabbed the bucket from the table, filled it with water at the sink, and used the bucket of water to douse the flame. The mathematician entered the room, grabbed the bucket from the table, filled it with water, replaced it on the table and said, "I have reduced it to the previous case."