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A woman walks into a bar accompanied by a dog and a cow.
The bartender says, "Hey, no animals are allowed in here.".
The woman replies: "These are very special animals.".
"How so?"
"They're knot theorists."
The bartender raises his eyebrows and says, "I've met a number of knot
theorists who I thought were animals, but never an animal that was a knot
theorist.".
"Well, I'll prove it to you. Ask them anything you like."
So the bartender asks the dog, "Name a knot invariant?".
"Arf, arf." barks the dog.
The bartender scowls and turns to the cow asking, "Name a topological
invariant?".
The cow says, "Mu, mu.".
At this point the bartender turns to the woman, says "Just what are you trying
to pull?" and throws them out of the bar.
Outside, the dog turns to the woman and asks, "Do you think I should have said
the Jones polynomial?".
(From "The Knot Book" by Colin Adams. Attributed to Joel Haas)
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Theorem: An episode of Larry King Live is compact and locally connected.
Proof: Let E be an episode of Larry King Live. Then E is the continuous image
of a finite number of interviews.
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Following the Great Flood, Noah lets the animals out of the ark and gives them
the command, "Go forth and multiply!".
Some time later, he goes about checking on them and is pleased to see that
they have followed his command - chicks, foals, cubs, pups and other baby
animals abound. Except for the snakes - no offspring to be found
Noah inquires why they haven't multiplied? To which the snakes reply, "We
can't. We're adders.".
Noah is bothered by this, and takes compassion on the snakes. What can he give
them? Finally he saws some sections of logs and makes some furniture for
them.
More time passes, and Noah again visits the snakes. Baby snakes
everywhere!
Noah is pleased, but confused. "I thought you said you couldn't do this?", he
remarks. The snakes smile and reply, "Oh, it's much better since you gave us
those log tables!".
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Q: Divide 14 sugar cubes into 3 cups of coffee so that each cup has an odd
number of sugar cubes.
A: 1, 1, 12
Riposte: 12 isn't odd!
A: It's an odd number of cubes to put into a cup of coffee (groan).
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Q: What is purple and commutes?
A: An Abelian grape.
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Q: What is yellow and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice?
A: Zorn's lemon.
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Q: What is yellow and covered in blue paint?
A: The pumping lemon.
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A topologist comes home from work to find his wife and daughter wailing and
sobbing buckets. A police officer, who was trying to console them, greeted the
topologist with a somber expression. "I have terrible news for you.", he said.
"While at school, you son Dave was hit by a steam-roller and squashed flat. We
tried to contact you immediately, but you had already left your office before
we could reach you."
The mathematician spent a few minutes in horrified disbelief. "Did he ... did
he die instantly? Was he taken to the hospital?"
"He died within the few seconds it took for the vehicle to run him over", the
officer said. "He was in pain, but only for a short time."
"We need you to come down to the morgue."
So together they went down to the city morgue. The officer watched as the
mathematician was shown the body, a broken and flattened wreck. "Can you
identify him as your son?", the police officer asked.
"No", said the topologist, "but I think I can identify a pair of antipodal
points."
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Q: What is yellow, linear, normed and complete?
A: A Bananach space.
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Q: What do you get when you cross an elephant with a mountain climber?
A: You can't cross an elephant with a mountain climber. A mountain climber is
a scalar.
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Q: What do you get when you cross an mosquito with a mountain climber?
A: You can't cross an mosquito with a mountain climber. A mountain climber is
a scalar and the mosquito is a vector.
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The derivative of (r^3)/3? is funny.
A: r dr r. (Get it? Har-dy har har.)
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Q: What's the contour integral of Western Europe?
A: Zero. The pole's are in Eastern Europe.
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Note: Cauchy's dog left a residue at every pole.
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Q: What's the contour integral around the western hemisphere?
A: Zero. There are no poles there.
Addendum: Well, there might be some poles there, but they are removable.
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Q: When is a pole also a branch point?
A: The International Date Line is a branch cut for local time on the surface
of the Earth; branch points are the end of branch cuts; so ...
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When Polish Airlines bought a fleet of 747s the government banned them from
putting passengers on the top deck. They were afraid of instabilities caused
by poles in the upper half-plane.
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A doctor, a lawyer and a mathematician were discussing the question as to
whether it is better to have a wife or a mistress. The lawyer explained, "With
a divorce as costly as it is, it is far better to have a mistress.". The
doctor responded, "No, to avoid possible exposure to sexually transmitted
diseases, it is necessary to enter into a monogamous relationship with one
woman, your wife.". The mathematician reflected on those answers for a moment,
then cleared his throat and commented, "No. Both of you are wrong. It is best
to have both a wife and a mistress. That way, when your wife thinks you are
with your mistress, and your mistress thinks you are with your wife, you can
go to the office and do mathematics!".
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Q: What is black and white ivory and fills space?
A: A piano curve (Peano curve).
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Q: What's the differential of hi-ho?
A: hi de-ho and ho de-hi
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Q: What's the differential of hi over ho?
A: ho de-hi minus hi de-ho over ho-ho
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Q: What's the integral of dcabin over cabin?
A: A log cabin by the sea. ( log( cabin ) + C )
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Q: What's an Abelian group under addition, is closed, associative,
distributive, and bears a curse?
A: The ring of the Nibilung.
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Q: What are some favorite foods of mathematicians?
A: Chicken supremum, Chocolate log
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One day while a professor is teaching class, a function walks through the door
and takes a seat at the front of the class. The teacher becomes incensed; he
runs over to the function and yells, "I differentiate you! I differentiate
you!". But, the function just sits there unaffected. This enrages the teacher
further, who again shouts, "I differentiate you! I differentiate you!".
Smiling, the function replies, "I am e^x.".
Smugly, the professor retorts, "I am d/dy." (as the function disappears).
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My mother is a mathematician, so she knows how to induce good behavior.
"If I've told you N times, I've told you N+1 times ...".
