What do you call a young eigensheep?

May 11, 2005 12:10 AM

The Prime Number Shitting Bear, Finite Simple Group of Order Two[video], Math Jokes, Physics Jokes
posted by apathy0o0 (29 comments total)

apathy, you will never be forgiven for that video.

The source of all of those math jokes is a paper from January's Notices of the American Mathematical Society by Paul Renteln and Alan Dundes entitled Foolproof: A Sampling of Mathematical Folk Humor, which may be the most simultaneously hilarious and awful thing I have ever had the (dis?)pleasure to read.
posted by teferi at 1:10 AM on May 11, 2005

Those math jokes at Wolfram are pretty weak but the article on physics humor is great.

And from the Slashdot thread:

"Why was Heisenberg's wife unsatisfied?

When he had the time he didn't have the energy, and when he had the position, he didn't have the momentum."
posted by zanni at 1:13 AM on May 11, 2005

Hehe... the Klein Four Group.
posted by sbutler at 1:22 AM on May 11, 2005

Two strings walk into a bar. The first one says, "Bartender, I'd like a white russian." The second one says, "I'd like one too.kN%hF\34<TC]3j+~5Ce&((ER'S0WVn`)2mpuJL,uJ/+[YK.v"

The second string adds, "Please excuse my friend, he's not null-terminated."
posted by adzm at 1:40 AM on May 11, 2005

you will never be forgiven for that video.

Agreed.

<Rant>It's a capella. Why is the guy on the right pretending to play a drum set? I get it, he's the human beat-box, but that's no excuse to air-drum.</Rant>
posted by thedevildancedlightly at 1:41 AM on May 11, 2005

I'm afraid to click the link since I'm at work (if it's Flash it won't work on this computer anyway), but just the thought of the Prime Number Shitting Bear is vastly entertaining. Good thing I'm here alone so I can guffaw.
posted by deusdiabolus at 3:43 AM on May 11, 2005

Oh boy, are we telling math jokes?
posted by weston at 4:11 AM on May 11, 2005

A neutron walks into a bar and orders a drink. Bartender says, "For you, no charge."
posted by plexi at 6:00 AM on May 11, 2005

Dude, that's a physics joke. Those are on a completely different level. Ehm, plane.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:04 AM on May 11, 2005

My favourite piece of physical graffiti:

Schrodinger cuts wave equations down to psis.

Of course, I appreciated that one far more before I learned Greek properly and found out that "psi" is actually pronounced "see". Dammit.
posted by Decani at 6:23 AM on May 11, 2005

Huh? If you're speaking Greek, it's pronounced p-see, with a p- at the start. If you're speaking English, it's pronounced sigh (with p-sigh and p-see as alternates).
posted by languagehat at 6:49 AM on May 11, 2005

Here's a good collection of math jokes
posted by vernondalhart at 7:13 AM on May 11, 2005

NEEEEEERDS
posted by fungible at 7:38 AM on May 11, 2005

Oh man, the ones in the Slashdot thread are awful. Like this:

Q: What do you get when you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito?

A: *Everybody* knows that you can't cross a scalar with a vector!

For me, the spherical cow joke still reigns supreme.
posted by gramschmidt at 8:00 AM on May 11, 2005

languagehat: the 'p' is largely swallowed in Greek pronunciation. I didn't really want to pedantically explain that and, as the relevant part of the point was the 'see'/'sigh' issue I saw even less point in doing so. Jesus.
posted by Decani at 8:17 AM on May 11, 2005

There are manifold problems with this thread.
posted by AlexReynolds at 8:25 AM on May 11, 2005

Huh? If you're speaking Greek, it's pronounced p-see, with a p- at the start.

FWIW, there are at least three professors I'm aware of that pronounce nearly every greek symbol they point to as "sigma."
posted by fatllama at 10:48 AM on May 11, 2005

Oh, and applause to apathy0o0 for that video.
posted by fatllama at 10:49 AM on May 11, 2005

gramschmidt, I heard that joke in a better form as:

Whaddaya get if you cross a mountain climber and an elephant?

You can't; a mountain climber's a scaler.

This leaves it up to the joke-victim to understand the implication that an elephant (or mosquito) is a vector.

Hey, what's new?
C over lambda.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:18 AM on May 11, 2005

From Slashdot:
Q: What does a mathematician do when he's constipated? A: He work's it out with a pencil.

I totally forgot about the Prime-Number-Shitting bear...thanks. There's also The Prime-Number-Shitting Goatse Man (note: I'm at work, so that link is unverified).

And that video is priceless.
posted by nTeleKy at 11:40 AM on May 11, 2005

Math pickup lines
posted by Gary at 1:31 PM on May 11, 2005

languagehat: the 'p' is largely swallowed in Greek pronunciation. I didn't really want to pedantically explain that

No, as a matter of fact, it's not. It's "largely" (read, entirely) "swallowed" (read, ignored) by English speakers who don't want to bother pronouncing the Greek correctly (the accents, of course, are even more widely ignored), but actual Greeks do and always have pronounced it quite clearly. And I wouldn't be making a point of all this except that your original comment depends entirely on the "fact" that you "learned Greek properly [my emphasis] and found out" something that isn't true. I repeat, psi is pronounced "sigh" in English, making your original comment pointless. You can revamp your doubtless well-worn anecdote or retreat in good order, but quit trying to defend the indefensible. Jesus yourself.
posted by languagehat at 1:56 PM on May 11, 2005

languagehat: I hate to do this sort of thing, but I lived in Greece for almost a year and, shockingly enough, heard Greek spoken by natives constantly. When they say "psi", the p is swallowed, as in barely pronounced. Lips together, the barest hint of a plosive, and then 'see'.

Look, perhaps this is no more than a misunderstanding about what I mean by 'swallowed', so let me try another way: they do not pronounce the 'p' fully, as in "puh-see". It is a severely clipped 'p' sound. So much so that it's barely what we English speakers would call an initial 'p' sound.

Now shall we waste some more time on this? Maybe post some wav files and argue about just how pee-ey the initial sound is? Would that be fun?
posted by Decani at 2:04 PM on May 11, 2005

Like this, in fact. (Sorry, I couldn't figure out how to lik directly to psi)

Now, if you are still going to insist that "swallowed" is not a fair description of that initial 'p' I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to step outside!
posted by Decani at 2:12 PM on May 11, 2005

OK, fair enough -- this is indeed a misunderstanding about what you meant by "swallowed." But without the information that you'd lived in Greece, I had to assume that you meant you'd taken a Greek class or something. Having lived in Astoria with Greek landlords and spent time in Greece myself, I now know what you're talking about. Buy you a beer retsina?
posted by languagehat at 2:56 PM on May 11, 2005

I recall from my college chemistry textbook the section of vapor pressure, "Tungsten is so dense, chemists like to say it has a vapor pressure of one atom per universe". Printed in the outer margin in subnote magenta, "Chemists find this funny."

I switched my major to graphic design and I've remained moderately funny ever since.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 3:16 PM on May 11, 2005

I second fatllama. The song video was very cute.
posted by Zurishaddai at 4:40 PM on May 11, 2005

languagehat: I would be delighted to share a retsina with you. And as I live in Williamsburg, that is distinctly possible. Just don't let me get drunk enough to challenge you to a 3-star Metaxa drinking competition. Please.
posted by Decani at 5:53 PM on May 14, 2005

I'm just going to let that god damned bear keep shitting out those prime numbers.
posted by nanojath at 12:00 AM on May 15, 2005