March 10, 2010 by Uri.

A customer walked into our auto-parts store looking for a flat washer. “That’ll be 15 cents,” I said.

“Fifteen cents for a washer? Are you crazy?” he yelled. “I’ll drill a hole in a quarter and make my own.”

Jack Reeves

[Source: Reader’s Digest, August 2009, @Work (p. 67)]

Posted in Jokes, Reader's Digest, Math Fun, Math Humor | No Comments »

February 22, 2010 by Uri.

Driving is a serious matter but this is funny.

Visiting family in Kentucky is a heart-stopping experience if only because my brother-in-law drives in the middle of the road, straddling the double
yellow lines that separate traffic. My sister-in-law does little to ease my fears. Seeing the horror in my eyes, she once said, “Don’t worry. Everyone around here drives in the middles of the road.”

Lisa Walters, Ypsilanti, Michigan

[Source: Reader’s Digest, June 2009, Life (p. 198)]

Posted in Jokes, Reader's Digest, Math Humor | No Comments »

June 12, 2009 by Uri.

A student returned home from a date at 3 AM. Her parents were very upset, “You’re late! You said you’d be home by 11:45!”
“Actually,” the girl replied, “I’m right on time. I said I’d be home by 1/4 of 12.”

[Origin: unknown; several variations of this joke appear on various web; a version of this joke, submitted by Zhang Wenyi, was published in Reader’s Digest, July 2009, “Laugh!:)”, p. 27]

Posted in Jokes, Reader's Digest, Math Humor, Fractions | No Comments »

February 22, 2009 by Uri.

For the unfamiliar, there is a class of jokes about how awesome Chuck Norris is. Here I will post those with mathematical twist.

• Chuck Norris counted to infinity, twice.
[www.chucknorrisfacts.com, as of 2009-02-22]

• Chuck Norris knows the last digit of pi.
[www.chucknorrisfacts.com/page8.html, as of 2009-02-22]

• Chuck Norris can divide by zero.
[www.chucknorrisfacts.com/page2.html, as of 2009-02-22]

• If you have five dollars and Chuck Norris has five dollars, Chuck Norris has more money than you.
[www.chucknorrisfacts.com, as of 2009-02-22]

• The square-root of -1 is not imaginary. It is just hiding from Chuck Norris.
[Ben, 2009-02-22]

• The shortest distance between two points is Chuck Norris.
[original, 2009-02-22]

• The square root of 2 is rational number for Chuck Norris.
[org.]

• Chuck Norris can square the circle, double the cube and trisect an angle using only his fingers for a compass and his arm for a straight edge.
[org.]

Posted in Math Education, Math Humor, Math | 1 Comment »

February 9, 2009 by Uri.

Flummoxed by his true-false final exam, a student decides to toss a coin up in the air. Heads means true; tails, false. Thirty minutes later, he is done, well before the rest of the class. But then the student startsd flipping the coin again. And soon he’s swearing and sweating over each question.

“What’s wrong?” asks the concern teacher.

“I’m rechecking my answers,” says the student.

[Comic Wendell Potter, Laugh!:), Reader Digest, March 2009, p. 81]

Uri’s Comment: It is interesting to note that the student can change any answer that is not confirmed without affecting the probable grade of the test. Of course, for this to be true, the number of questions should be as large as possible. Considering that (a) it took the students 30 min. to finish the test and (b) it takes under 6 seconds to toss a coin and jot down the result, the test could have consisted of 150-300 questions (no need to spend time on reading each question). This test consists of a sufficient number of questions for probability to determine the overall grade.

Posted in Probability, Math Humor | No Comments »

March 16, 2008 by Uri.

“To be or not to be,” that is the answer.

What is the question?

Solution

Posted in Math Humor, Math | No Comments »

December 27, 2007 by Uri.

Is it always true that if you have a good thing, then having more of it is better and, conversely, if you got something bad having more of it is worse? Case in point, consider the following situation (usually told as a joke):
“What is worse than finding a worm in the apple you are eating?”
“I don’t know… Two worms.”
“No. Half a worm!”

Posted in Math Humor, Fractions, Numbers | No Comments »

October 17, 2007 by Uri.

The language teacher: “In most languages a double negative means the positive but in no language a double positive means the negative.”

A student at the back of the classroom sneers: “Yeah, yeah!”

(According to John Allen Paulos this joke is based on a “true story” that took place during “a talk on linguistic” given by a “well-known philosopher”, which he did not name. The person who responded with the double-positive was “another well-known philosopher.” [Mathematics and Humor, p. 43.])

Posted in Math Humor | No Comments »

July 23, 2007 by Uri.

I will start my collection of math humor with Abbott & Costello. For Abbott and Costello loved to perform funny mathematical routines. Some they performed in different settings. I once heard that they had a mathematician among their writers. Many of their mathematical skits are quite famous. I think that their most famous routine, “Who’s On First’” is funny because of its mathematical point of view (I will explain it in that post.)

Can you figure out why these skits are so funny? What is wrong with the math and how to fix it?

Posted in Abbott and Costello, Math Humor | No Comments »