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Ask HN: Any good math jokes?

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Re: Ask HN: Any good math jokes?

#121

Post by drblast »

An engineer and a mathematician went out for a drink. On the other side of the room, they spotted a gorgeous woman.

"I wish I could work up the courage to talk to her," said the shy mathematician.

"No problem," said the engineer. "Just walk halfway over to her, take a sip of beer, then walk halfway again, and do that over and over until you're next to her.

"But then I'll NEVER get there," said the mathematician.

Re: Ask HN: Any good math jokes?

#125

Post by whackedspinach »

troymc wrote: post #14

xkcd comics are already licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 license. That's probably all you need for a math team t-shirt.

I saw that, but in the end some of the images are only about 700x400 px. At 200 ppi (which is what t shirts should be printed at, I guess), that just isn't a high enough resolution. And I'm not sure If I really want to make it larger since it will not look all that good.

Re: Ask HN: Any good math jokes?

#126

Post by abeppu »

An evil dictator locks up all the academics in his country in a time of war. As the war worsens the army platoon left guarding the detention facility is called away to the front, and leaves the academics unattended in their cells bottled water, canned food and no can openers. When the war is over and the dictatorship is collapsed, the detention facility is opened up. It's found that most of the humanities and social scientists have survived, having opened their cans by throwing them randomly at the walls until the cans broke open. The physicists had figured out the optimum angle at which to throw the can in order to reliably open it. Several mathematicians have suffered severe malnutrition, having successfully proven that "there exists a unique optimal throwing angle theta ..." The cell of a topologist was found empty, though a muffled screaming could be heard from one of his cans. A can opener is fetched, and the topologist is removed, covered in food, mumbling about an error in sign.
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