math jokes

"Psst, c'mere," said the shifty-eyed man wearing a long black trenchcoat, as he beckoned me off the rainy street into a damp dark alley. I followed.

"What are you selling?" I asked.

"Geometrical algebra drugs."

"Huh!?"

"Geometry drugs. Ya got your uppers, your downers, your sidewaysers, your inside-outers..."

"Stop right there," I interrupted. "I've never heard of inside-outers."

"Oh, man, you'll love 'em. Makes you feel like M.C. ever-lovin' Escher on a particularly weird day."

"Go on..."

"OK, your inside-outers, your arbitrary bilinear mappers, and here, heh, here are the best ones," he said, pulling out a large clear bottle of orange pills.

"What are those, then?" I asked.

"Givens transformers. They'll rotate you about more planes than you even knew existed."

"Sounds gross. What about those bilinear mappers?"

"There's a whole variety of them. Here's one you'll love -- they call it 'One Over Z' on the street. Take one of these little bad boys and you'll be on speaking terms with the Point at Infinity."

Analysis:
1. Differentiate it and put into the refrig. Then integrate it in the refrig.
2. Redefine the measure on the referigerator (or the elephant).
3. Apply the Banach-Tarsky theorem.

Number theory:
1. First factorize, second multiply.
2. Use induction. You can always squeeze a bit more in.

Algebra:
1. Step 1. Show that the parts of it can be put into the refrig. Step 2. Show that the refrig. is closed under the addition.
2. Take the appropriate universal refrigerator and get a surjection from refrigerator to elephant.

Topology:
1. Have it swallow the refrig. and turn inside out.
2. Make a refrig. with the Klein bottle.
3. The elephant is homeomorphic to a smaller elephant.
4. The elephant is compact, so it can be put into a finite collection of refrigerators. That's usually good enough.
5. The property of being inside the referigerator is hereditary. So, take the elephant's mother, cremate it, and show that the ashes fit inside the refrigerator.
6. For those who object to method 3 because it's cruel to animals. Put the elephant's BABY in the refrigerator.

Algebraic topology:
Replace the interior of the refrigerator by its universal cover, R^3.

Linear algebra:
1. Put just its basis and span it in the refrig.
2. Show that 1% of the elephant will fit inside the refrigerator. By linearity, x% will fit for any x.

Affine geometry:
There is an affine transformation putting the elephant into the refrigerator.

Set theory:
1. It's very easy! Refrigerator = { elephant } 2) The elephant and the interior of the refrigerator both have cardinality c.

Geometry:
Declare the following:
Axiom 1. An elephant can be put into a refrigerator.

Complex analysis:
Put the refrig. at the origin and the elephant outside the unit circle. Then get the image under the inversion.

Numerical analysis:
1. Put just its trunk and refer the rest to the error term.
2. Work it out using the Pentium.

Statistics:
1. Bright statistician. Put its tail as a sample and say "Done."
2. Dull statistician. Repeat the experiment pushing the elephant to the refrig.
3. Our NEW study shows that you CAN'T put the elephant in the refrigerator.

An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician are trying to set up a fenced-in area for some sheep, but they have a limited amount of building material. The engineer gets up first and makes a square fence with the material, reasoning that it's a pretty good working solution. "No no," says the physicist, "there's a better way." He takes the fence and makes a circular pen, showing how it encompasses the maximum possible space with the given material.

Then the mathematician speaks up: "No, no, there's an even better way." To the others' amusement he proceeds to construct a little tiny fence around himself, then declares:

"I define myself to be on the outside."

It is proven that the celebration of birthdays is healthy. Statistics show that those people who celebrate the most birthdays become the oldest. -- S. den Hartog, Ph D. Thesis Universtity of Groningen.