Have You Conside that ...? (Thinking differently)

Fact: Most people have more than the average number of legs.

[Source: Joke #25, "31 Jokes for Nerds", YouTube Video, posted by Vlogbrothers]

(This observation is correct for all parts of the body.)

One One One and One One

One One One was one racehorse,
One One was one too.
One One One won one race,
One One won one too.

More Is Not Always…

Q: What’s worse than getting a flat tire?

A: Getting two flat tires.

Q: What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple?

A: Finding half a worm in your apple

When 15 > 25?

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)]

Driving Math with the Math of Driving

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)]

Right on Time

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]

Mathematical Chuck Norris Facts

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's just hiding from Chuck Norris.
[Ben, 2009-02-22]

• The shortest distance between two points is Chuck Norris.
[org.]

• 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.]

Testing Probability

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.

Math Riddle No. 1

"To be or not to be," that is the answer.

What is the question?

Solution

Is More Always Worse?

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, which is 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!"

Doube Negation, a Joke

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.])

Math Humor

I will start my collection of math humor with Abbott and 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?

Abbott and Costello, 13 x 7 = 28 (ver. 1, Navy Cook)

Abbott and Costello, Two Tens for a Five

Abbott and Costello, The Loan

Abbott and Costello, Who's on First?

The mathematical connection of this famous routine is not obvious. But some important math concepts are at the root of this funny skit.

After you stop laughing and, if you are like me, wipe the tears so you can see straight, you may take a minute to think about why this is so funny. Clearly it is the use of ordinary words as proper names. But "who" and "what" are not just ordinary words. These are pronouns.

Considering the history of human languages, nouns, proper names and pronouns predate numbers, constants and variables by thousands of years. More importantly natural languages, like English and Chinese are much older than formal languages like the semantic aspect of mathematics. This is a very important point to keep in mind. For math, as a language, abhors ambiguities. Math cannot tolerate confusing numbers and variables. In mathematical terms proper nouns are numbers or constants and pronouns are are variables and in "Who's On First?" Abbott and Costello do just that -- they confuse numbers or constants with variables.

I include "Who's On First?" in my math-humor collection because what makes it funny is the absurd exchange. And these absurds are rooted in ambiguities that we may tolerate in most normal communications. For a few moments we are made to see, if not to understand, the mathematical viewpoint of such ambiguities. This is an excellent illustration of the connection of strict mathematical concepts to ordinary language. If we remember this fact, we can often make those formal mathematical ideas much easier to understand.