There are three kinds of mathematicians: those who can count and those who cannot.
My geometry teacher was sometimes acute, and sometimes obtuse, but always, he was right.
Old mathematicians never die; they just lose some of their functions.
The great logician Betrand Russell (or was it A.N. Whitehead?) once
claimed that he could prove anything if given that 1 +1 = 1.
So one day, some smartypants asked him, "Ok. Prove that you're the Pope."
He thought for a while and proclaimed, "I am one. The Pope is one. Therefore,
the Pope and I are one."
Asked how his pet parrot died, the the mathematician answered "Polynomial. Polygon."
A physicist and a mathematician are sitting in a faculty lounge. Suddenly, the coffee machine catches fire. The physicist grabs a bucket, leaps toward the sink, fills the bucket with water and puts out the fire. Second day, the same two sit in the same lounge. Again, the coffee machine catches fire. This time, the mathematician gets a bucket and hands the bucket to the physicist, thus reducing the problem to a previously solved one.
Three men are in a hot-air balloon. Soon, they find themselves lost in a canyon somewhere. One of the three men says "I've got an idea. We can call for help in this canyon and the echo will carry our voices far."
So he leans over the basket and yells out, "HELLLLLLOOOOO! Where are we?"
(They hear the echo several times).
15 minutes later, they hear this echoing voice: "HELLLLLLOOOOO! you're lost!!"
One of the men says, "That must have been a mathematician."
Puzzled, one of the other asks, "Why do you say that?"
The reply : "For three reasons. (1) he took a long time to answer, (2) he was absolutely correct, and (3) his answer was absolutely useless."
A mathematician wandered home at 3 A.M. His wife angrily told him "You are late! You said you'd be home by a 11:45". The mathematician replied "I am right on time. I said I'd be home by a quarter of twelve".
An Engineer, a Physicist and a Mathematician are asked to find the value of 2 +2.
Engineer (after 3 minutes, with a slide rule) : "The answer is precisely 3.9974".
Physicist (after 6 hours of experiments) : "The value is approximately 4.002, with an error of plus or minus 0.005".
Mathematician (after a week of calculation) : "Well, I haven't found an answer yet but I can prove that an answer exists."
A Mathematician, an engineer and a physicist are given an identical
problem:
"Prove that all odd numbers greater than 2 are prime number."
They proceed:
Mathematician : 3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime, 9 is not a prime -
counterexample -claim is false.
Physicist : 3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime, 9 is an experimental
error, 11 is a prime,....
Engineer : 3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime, 9 is a prime, 11 is a prime,....
A Mathematician, an engineer and a physicist were traveling through Scotland when they saw a black sheep through the window of the train.
"Aha", says the engineer, "I see that Scottish sheep are black."
"Hmm", says the physician, "You mean that some Scottish sheep are black".
"No", says the mathematician, "All we know is that there is at least one sheep in Scotland, and that at least one side of that one sheep is black!"
A statistician can have his head in an oven and his feet in ice, and he will say that on the average he feels fine.
Q : What does a mathematician do when he is constipated?
A : He works it out with pencil.
Q : Did you hear about the murderous mathematician?
A : He went on a killing spree with a pair of axis!
A Mathematician is someone who is ready to assume everything except responsibility.