From the Q Files, a subsidiary of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
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From the Q Files, a subsidiary of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories |
TOP TEN EXCUSES FOR NOT DOING THE MATH HOMEWORK
1. I accidentally divided by zero and my paper burst into flames.
2. Isaac Newton's birthday.
3. I could only get arbitrarily close to my textbook. I couldn't
actually reach it.
4. I have the proof, but there isn't room to write it in this margin.
5. I was watching the World Series and got tied up trying to prove
that it converged.
6. I have a solar powered calculator and it was cloudy.
7. I locked the paper in my trunk but a four-dimensional dog got in
and ate it.
8. I couldn't figure out whether i am the square of negative one or
i is the square root of negative one.
9. 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.
10. I could have sworn I put the homework inside a Klein bottle, but
this morning I couldn't find it.
A young sports car driver named Breen
Had the fastest machine on the scene
He drove fast as light
With no cops in sight
And blue-shifted the red light to green
Question: How many atoms are in guacamole?
Answer: Avocado's number.
Question: What is Ethernet?
Answer: Something used to catch the etherbunny.
"It is true that primitive societies use only rough approximations
for the known constants of mathematics. For example, the northern tribes of
Alaska consider the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle
to be 3. But it is not true that the value of 3 is called Eskimo pi."
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
'Tis a favorite project of mine
A new value of pi to assign.
I would fix it at 3
For it's simpler, you see,
Than old 3 point 1 4 1 5 9.
- "The Lure of the Limerick" by W.S. Baring-Gould, p.5.
(Attributed to Harvey L. Carter)
Q: Why do chemists like nitrates so much?
A: They're cheaper than day rates.
A challenge for many long ages
Had baffled the savants and sages.
Yet at last came the light:
Seems old Fermat was right--
To the margin add 800 pages.
- Paul Chernoff [loosely]
[NOTE: I don't want to hear ANYONE giving me an exact number of pages!
THIS MEANS YOU.]
Q: Wadaya get when you take the circumference of your jack-o-lantern
and divide it by its diameter?
A: Pumpkin Pi
Numb, adj., devoid of sensation...
Number, comparative of numb.
[Source: Webster's Third New international Dictionary]
A mathematician named Klein
Thought the Mobius Band was divine.
Said he, "If you glue
The edges of two
You get a weird bottle like mine."
Little Willie, full of glee,
Put radium in grandma's tea.
Now he thinks it quite a lark
To see her shining in the dark.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had an exothermic fall
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't reverse the entropy trend.
A Mathematician, a Biologist and a Physicist are sitting in a street cafe
watching people going in and coming out of the house on the other side
of the street.
First they see two people going into the house. Time passes.
After a while they notice three persons coming out of the house.
The Physicist: "The measurement wasn't accurate.".
The Biologists conclusion: "They have reproduced".
The Mathematician: "If now exactly 1 person enters the house then it will be
empty again."
You know the tune! A handy-dandy way to remember the first 82 digits of
Pi. Why you'd need to remember the first 82 digits of Pi, I have no idea,
but it's still handy! And it's accurate! (I checked it with mathematica.)
Twinkle twinkle litle Pi
"Three point one four, one five nine,
Two six five three five eight nine.
Seven nine three,
Two three eight
Four six two
Six four three,
Three eight three two seven nine,
Five-oh-two, eighty-eight, forty-one, nine.
"Seven one six nine, three nine nine,
Three-seven-five,ten five, eight two oh nine.
Seven forty nine,
Forty-four five,
Nine two three,
Oh seven eight,
One six four oh six two eight,
Six two oh eight nine nine eight."
Q: What is a tachyon?
A: A sub-atomic particle devoid of good taste.
This poem was written by John Saxon (an author of math textbooks).
((12 + 144 + 20 + (3 * 4^(1/2))) / 7) + (5 * 11) = 9^2 + 0
Or for those who have trouble with the poem:
A Dozen, a Gross and a Score,
plus three times the square root of four,
divided by seven,
plus five times eleven,
equals nine squared plus zero, no more.
"Life is complex. It has real and imaginary components."
- Tom Potter
The Heineken Uncertainty Principle:
You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.
"Where ever you go, there you are"
- B. Bonzai
"The faster you go, the shorter you are"
- A. Einstein (loosely)
The QUOTIENT RULE SONG!!!
(sung to OLD MACDONALD'S FARM)
Lo-de-hi less hi-de-lo EIEIO
Then draw the line and down below EIEIO
With a dx here and a dy there
Here a slope, there a slope, yes there's hope, you can cope
Denominator squared will go EIEIO
Little Willie was a chemist.
Little Willie is no more.
For what he thought was H2O,
Was H2SO4.
- David Smillie
Willy thought that life was a bore,
So he drank some H2SO4.
But his dad was an M.D.
Who gave him some CaCO3.
Now Willy is neutralized, it's true,
But he's also full of CO2!
- David Smillie
Question: (to Isaac Newton) Why did the chicken cross the road?
A:
1) Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest. Chickens in motion tend to
cross the road.
2) It was pushed on the road.
3) It was pushed on the road by another chicken, which went away from
the road.
4) It was attracted to a chicken on the other side of the road.
Question: (to Wolfgang Pauli) Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: There already was a chicken on this side of the road.
A hydrogen atom came running into a police station asking for help....
Hydrogen atom: Someone just stole my electron!!!!
Policeman: Are you sure?
Hydrogen atom: Yes, I'm positive!!!!
Q: What did the circle say to the tangent line?
A: "Stop touching me!"
A math/computer science convention was being held. On the train to
the convention, a bunch of math majors and a bunch of computer science
majors were on the train. Each of the math majors had his/her train
ticket. The group of computer science majors had only ONE ticket for
all of them. The math majors started laughing and snickering.
Then, one of the CS majors said "here comes the conductor" and then
all of the CS majors went into the bathroom. The math majors were
puzzled. The conductor came aboard and said "tickets please" and got
tickets from all the math majors. He then went to the bathroom and
knocked on the door and said "ticket please" and the CS majors stuck
the ticket under the door. The conductor took it and then the CS
majors came out of the bathroom a few minutes later. The math majors
felt really stupid.
So, on the way back from the convention, the group of math majors had
one ticket for the group. They started snickering at the CS majors,
for the whole group had no tickets amongst them. Then, the CS major
lookout said "Conductor coming!". All the CS majors went to the
bathroom. All the math majors went to another bathroom. Then, before
the conductor came on board, one of the CS majors left the bathroom,
knocked on the other bathroom, and said "ticket please."
Q: How many radio astronomers does it take to change a light bulb.
A: None. They are not interested in that short wave stuff.
Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: In earlier work, Oskay [1] has shown that one mathematician can change
a light bulb.
If k mathematicians can change a light bulb, and if one more simply
watches them do it, then k+1 mathematicians will have changed the light
bulb.
Therefore, by induction, for all n in the positive integers, n
mathematicians can change a light bulb.
Bibliography:
[1] Oskay, Windell H., , "ODD #41", 1995
Fuller's Law of Cosmic Irreversability:
1 pot T --> 1 pot P
but
1 pot P -/-> 1 pot T
8W:) <-Smilie guy thinking about infinite summations.
Q: What's non-orientable and lives in the sea?
A: Mobius Dick.
Two male mathematicians are in a bar.
The first one says to the second that the average person knows very
little about basic mathematics. The second one disagrees, and claims that
most people can cope with a reasonable amount of math.
The first mathematician goes off to the washroom, and in his
absence the second calls over the waitress. He tells her that in a few
minutes, after his friend has returned, he will call her over and ask her a
question. All she has to do is answer one third x cubed.
She repeats `one thir -- dex cue'? He repeats `one third x cubed'.
Her: `one thir dex cuebd'? Yes, that's right, he says. So she
agrees, and goes off mumbling to herself, `one thir dex cuebd...'.
The first guy returns and the second proposes a bet to prove his
point, that most people do know something about basic math. He says he will
ask the blonde waitress an integral, and the first laughingly agrees.
The second man calls over the waitress and asks `what is the integral
of x squared?'. The waitress says `one third x cubed' and while walking
away, turns back and says over her shoulder `plus a constant'!
Q: What classic fallacy of logic is contained in the following proof?
All trees have bark.
All dogs bark.
Therefore, all dogs are trees. (Q.E.D.)
A: The fallacy of barking up the wrong tree.
The USDA once wanted to make cows produce milk faster, to improve the
dairy industry.
So, they decided to consult the foremost biologists and recombinant
DNA technicians to build them a better cow. They assembled this team of
great scientists, and gave them unlimited funding. They requested rare
chemicals, weird bacteria, tons of quarantine equipment, there was a
horrible typhus epidemic they started by accident, and, 2 years later, they
came back with the "new, improved cow." It had a milk production
improvement of 2% over the original.
They then tried with the greatest Nobel Prize winning chemists
around. They worked for six months, and, after requisitioning tons of
chemical equipment, and poisoning half the small town in Colorado where
they were working with a toxic cloud from one of their experiments, they
got a 5% improvement in milk output.
Finally, in desperation, they turned to the physicists. The
foremost physicist of his time offered to help them with the problem. Upon
hearing the problem, he told the delegation that they could come back in
the morning and he would have solved the problem. In the morning, they came
back, and he handed them a piece of paper with the computations for the
new, 300% improved milk cow.
The plans began:
"A Proof of the Attainability of Increased Milk Output from Bovines:
Consider a spherical cow......"
Acronym of the day:
DITUIHIBMSL? : Did I tell you I hate IBMs lately?
A doctor, a lawyer and a mathematician were discussing the relative
merits of having a wife or a mistress.
The lawyer says: "For sure a mistress is better. If you have a wife
and want a divorce, it causes all sorts of legal problems.
The doctor says: "It's better to have a wife because the sense of
security lowers your stress and is good for your health.
The mathematician says: " You're both wrong. It's best to have both so
that when the wife thinks you're with the mistress and the mistress
thinks you're with your wife --- you can do some mathematics.
"Then only two notable things to come out of Berkely were acid and UNIX.
We do not think that this is a coincidence."
- unknown
"A person who can, within a year, solve x^2 - 92y^2 = 1 is a mathematician."
-- Brahmagupta
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.'
A mathematician and a physicist were asked the following question:
Suppose you walked by a burning house and saw a hydrant and
a hose not connected to the hydrant. What would you do?
P: I would attach the hose to the hydrant, turn on the water, and put out
the fire.
M: I would attach the hose to the hydrant, turn on the water, and put out
the fire.
Then they were asked this question:
Suppose you walked by a house and saw a hose connected to
a hydrant. What would you do?
P: I would keep walking, as there is no problem to solve.
M: I would disconnect the hose from the hydrant and set the house on fire,
reducing the problem to a previously solved form.
Lim Sqrt(3) = 2
3->4
Two men are in a hot-air balloon. Soon, they find themselves lost
in a canyon somewhere. One of them 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 lost!!"
The other guy says, "That must have been a mathematician."
Puzzled, the first 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."
There was a mad scientist ( a mad ...social... scientist ) who
kidnapped three colleagues, an engineer, a physicist, and a
mathematician, and locked each of them in seperate cells with plenty
of canned food and water but no can opener.
A month later, returning, the mad scientist went to the engineer's
cell and found it long empty. The engineer had constructed a can
opener from pocket trash, used aluminum shavings and dried sugar to
make an explosive, and escaped.
The physicist had worked out the angle necessary to knock the lids off
the tin cans by throwing them against the wall. She was developing a
good pitching arm and a new quantum theory.
The mathematician had stacked the unopened cans into a surprising
solution to the kissing problem; his desiccated corpse was propped
calmly against a wall, and this was inscribed on the floor in blood:
Theorem: If I can't open these cans, I'll die.
Proof: assume the opposite...
Q: Why did the chicken cross the Moebius strip?
A: To get to the other ... er, um ...
Q: What is the world's longest song?
A: "Aleph-nought Bottles of Beer on the Wall."
Conway's Law:
In any organization there will always be one person who knows
what is going on.
This person must be fired.
New School Cheer:
e to the u, du/dx
e to the x dx
cosine, secant, tangent, sine,
3.14159
integral, radical, u dv,
algebra, vector, LFC!
...and another...
E to the x dx dy
radical transcendental pi
secant cosine tangent sine
3.14159
2.71828
come on folks let's integerate!!
Q: How many topologists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: It really doesn't matter, since they'd rather knot.
And ONCE AGAIN, always remember,
Math and Alcohol don't mix, so...
PLEASE DON'T DRINK AND DERIVE
...And then there's every parent's
scream when their child walks into
the room dazed and staggering:
"OH NO...YOU'VE BEEN TAKING DERIVATIVES!!"
Asked how his pet parrot died, the mathematician answered
"Polynomial. Polygon."
A mathematician went insane and believed that he was the
differentiation operator. His friends had him placed in a mental
hospital until he got better. All day he would go around frightening
the other patients by staring at them and saying "I differentiate
you!"
One day he met a new patient; and true to form he stared at him and
said "I differentiate you!", but for once, his victim's expression
didn't change. Surprised, the mathematician marshalled his energies,
stared fiercely at the new patient and said loudly "I differentiate
you!", but still the other man had no reaction. Finally, in
frustration, the mathematician screamed out "I DIFFERENTIATE YOU!" --
at which point the new patient calmly looked up and said, "You can
differentiate me all you like: I'm e to the x."
POP QUIZ TIME!!!!
Match the following math terms:
S. What the acorn said when he grew up N. bisects
u. A dead parrot g. center
F. What you should do when it rains R. hypotenuse
m. A geometer who has been to the beach H. coincide
h. The set of cards is missing y. polygon
A. The boy has a speech defect t. secant
K. How they schedule gym class p. tangent
b. What he did when his mother-in-law wanted to go home D. ellipse
O. The tall kettle boiling on the stove W. geometry
r. Why the girl doesn't run a 4-minute mile j. decagon
Q: How many Microsoft programmers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None - Microsoft just defines darkness to be the new standard.
Q: What do you get if you cross an elephant with a zebra.
A: Elephant zebra sin theta.
Q: What do you get if you cross an elephant with a mountain climber.
A: You can't do that. A mountain climber is a scalar.
Q: What do you call a man with no arms and no
legs, in cylindrical coordinates?
A: Rod.
Q Why does hamburger have less energy than steak?
A Because it's in a ground state!
I have a decaffeinated coffee table. You'd never know it to look at it.
- Steven Wright
Pardo's First Postulate:
Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
Arnold's Addendum:
Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats.
There once was a man named Fisk
Who's insertions were incredibly brisk
When he went into action
The Lorentz Contraction
Turned his rod into a disk
Q&A: THE PENTIUM FDIV BUG
Q: Complete the following word analogy: Add is to Subtract as Multiply
is to:
1) Divide
2) ROUND
3) RANDOM
4) On a Pentium, all of the above
A: Number 4.
Q: Why didn't Intel call the Pentium the 586?
A: Because they added 486 and 100 on the first Pentium and got
585.999983605.
TOP TEN NEW INTEL SLOGANS FOR THE PENTIUM
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
9.9999973251 It's a ANOMALY, Dammit, not a Bug
8.9999163362 It's Close Enough, We Say So
7.9999414610 Nearly 300 Correct Opcodes
6.9999831538 You Don't Need to Know What's Inside
5.9999835137 Redefining the PC -- and Mathematics As Well
4.9999999021 We Fixed It, Really
3.9998245917 Division Considered Harmful
2.9991523619 Why Do You Think They Call It *Floating* Point?
1.9999103517 We're Looking for a Few Good Flaws
0.9999999998 The Errata Inside
From: david@defcen.GOV.AU (David Wilson)
Subject: Re: Deriving the probability interpretation
Newsgroups: sci.math
In article T.Moore@massey.ac.nz writes:
>In article <2lgpet$n94@scunix2.harvard.edu>, rmaimon@husc9.Harvard.EDU (Ron
>Maimon) wrote:
>
>> It is impossible to build a computer that will decide whether or not
>> exp(pi) is rational or not.
>
>Is it?
No, it isn't. I have just written a computer program that decides this
question correctly. In fact, I have two computer programs. One
of them prints out " exp(pi) is rational" and the other prints out
"exp(pi) is irrational". Certainly, one of them has decided the
question correctly. Unfortunately I don't know which one.
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
"No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats --
approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less."
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12 -- LITHP
This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of
an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH". LITHP is said
to be useful in protheththing lithtth.
Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.
This technique is used on equations with "n" in them. Induction
techniques are very popular, even the military used them.
SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.
We know it's true for n equal to 1. Now assume that it's true
for every natural number less than n. N is arbitrary, so we can take n
as large as we want. If n is sufficiently large, the case of n+1 is
trivially equivalent, so the only important n are n less than n. We
can take n = n (from above), so it's true for n+1 because it's just
about n.
QED. (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
*Bonus Dementia:
1994-08-12 Slide Rule Surprise
We have obtained a stash of genuine 12" slide rules. They are
logarithmic in nature. They can be ordered via email
(mitshop@mit.edu) or telephone (617-253-4462). The price is
$19.95 plus $4.50 shipping/handling. The primary use of this
instrument is to produce the following speech from your father,
the engineer:
"When I was your age, we didn't have one of them fancy-ass
computers, we had to do all the calculations by hand, and
I'll bet you don't even know what the square root of 369.72 is,
but I can find it using this here stick, you see, now how was
it these things worked anyway, you are supposed to line up, uh,
something and something else, uh, well, we were real engineers
back then, I tell you."
Don't say you weren't warned.
- Ad from the latest Annals of Improbable Research
(Formerly the Journal of irreproducible Results)
*Bonus Dementia:
"Computers allow you to make more mistakes than any invention in
the history of mankind. With the possible exception of handguns and
tequila"
- sign seen on a door in a physics building
on an unknown campus
Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
"Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get
out."
Once upon a time, there was a statistician who was afraid to fly
after calculation the chances of a bomb being on board and found it low,
but not low enough for comfort. A few months later, he was seen happily
boarding a plane. When he was asked if he had forgotten his previous fear,
he replied, "No, but I calculated the chances of TWO bombs being on board,
and those were very low. So now I carry a bomb in my suitcase whenever I
fly...."
MICROSOFT Bids to Acquire Catholic Church
By Hank Vorjes
VATICAN CITY (AP) -- In a joint press conference in St. Peter's Square
this morning, MICROSOFT Corp. and the Vatican announced that the
Redmond software giant will acquire the Roman Catholic Church in
exchange for an unspecified number of shares of MICROSOFT common stock.
If the deal goes through, it will be the first time a computer software
company has acquired a major world religion.
With the acquisition, Pope John Paul II will become the senior
vice-president of the combined company's new Religious Software
Division, while MICROSOFT senior vice-presidents Michael Maples and
Steven Ballmer will be invested in the College of Cardinals, said
MICROSOFT Chairman Bill Gates.
"We expect a lot of growth in the religious market in the next five to
ten years," said Gates. "The combined resources of MICROSOFT and the
Catholic Church will allow us to make religion easier and more fun for
a broader range of people."
Through the MICROSOFT Network, the company's new on-line service, "we
will make the sacraments available on-line for the first time" and
revive the popular pre-Counter-Reformation practice of selling
indulgences, said Gates. "You can get Communion, confess your sins,
receive absolution -- even reduce your time in Purgatory -- all without
leaving your home."
A new software application, MICROSOFT Church, will include a macro
language which you can program to download heavenly graces
automatically while you are away from your computer.
An estimated 17,000 people attended the announcement in St Peter's
Square, watching on a 60-foot screen as comedian Don Novello -- in
character as Father Guido Sarducci -- hosted the event, which was
broadcast by satellite to 700 sites worldwide.
Pope John Paul II said little during the announcement. When Novello
chided Gates, "Now I guess you get to wear one of these pointy hats,"
the crowd roared, but the pontiff's smile seemed strained.
The deal grants MICROSOFT exclusive electronic rights to the Bible and
the Vatican's prized art collection, which includes works by such
masters as Michelangelo and Da Vinci. But critics say MICROSOFT will
face stiff challenges if it attempts to limit competitors' access to
these key intellectual properties.
"The Jewish people invented the look and feel of the holy scriptures,"
said Rabbi David Gottschalk of Philadelphia. "You take the parting of
the Red Sea -- we had that thousands of years before the Catholics came
on the scene."
But others argue that the Catholic and Jewish faiths both draw on a
common Abrahamic heritage. "The Catholic Church has just been more
successful in marketing it to a larger audience," notes Notre Dame
theologian Father Kenneth Madigan. Over the last 2,000 years, the
Catholic Church's market share has increased dramatically, while
Judaism, which was the first to offer many of the concepts now touted
by Christianity, lags behind.
Historically, the Church has a reputation as an aggressive competitor,
leading crusades to pressure people to upgrade to Catholicism, and
entering into exclusive licensing arrangements in various kingdoms
whereby all subjects were instilled with Catholicism, whether or not
they planned to use it. Today Christianity is available from several
denominations, but the Catholic version is still the most widely used.
The Church's mission is to reach "the four corners of the earth,"
echoing MICROSOFT's vision of "a computer on every desktop and in every home".
Gates described MICROSOFT's long-term strategy to develop a scalable
religious architecture that will support all religions through
emulation. A single core religion will be offered with a choice of
interfaces according to the religion desired -- "One religion, a couple
of different implementations," said Gates.
The MICROSOFT move could spark a wave of mergers and acquisitions,
according to Herb Peters, a spokesman for the U.S. Southern Baptist
Conference, as other churches scramble to strengthen their position in
the increasingly competitive religious market.
Felus cattus, is your taxonomic nomenclature
an endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature?
Your visual, olifactory, and auditory senses
contribute to your hunting skills, and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your sub-vocal oscillations,
a singular development of cat communications
that obviates your basic hedonistic prediliction
for a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.
A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents;
you would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.
And when not being utilized to aid in locomotion,
It often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.
O Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display
connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.
- Data
Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his
name correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into
(Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but
Americans call him by value.
Q: Whats the difference between IBM and Jurassic park ?
A: One is a technological theme park full of dinosaurs
and the other is a film by steven spielberg.
There once was a girl named Irene
Who lived on distilled kerosene
But she started absorbin'
A new hydrocarbon
And since then has never benzene.
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