Tuesday, 18 September 2007

One reason I love Cambridge...

People tell (and laugh at) jokes like this one I was told over afternoon tea in the lab yesterday:

e^x and a constant are walking down the street together, when they catch sight of a differential operator coming their way. The constant is seized with terror, and he dives off the road into the bushes, but e^x isn't too bothered, and he continues on down the road confidently. When he gets close enough to the differential operator, he greets him with a 'hello'. The differential operator then introduces himself, saying, 'hello, I'm d/dy'.




5 comments:

  1. Ummmm, lol...so confused...
    Maybe my sister would get it

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  2. Yikes, you ARE getting scary Ann. I'm an engineer, but so removed from calculus that even I don't get it. But how about this one...
    A physicist, a biologist, and a mathematician sat at an outdoor cafe. Across the street was an empty house. They watched two people enter the house. Later, they watched three people exit. The physicist said: "our first count must have been inaccurate." The biologist said: "they must have reproduced." But the mathematician said: "now, if someone goes into the house, it will be empty again."

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  3. I had to have James explain it to me. It didn't seem funny, even then.  TGD had to think about it for a minute, though, but it did make him smile. 

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  4. I guess they're going to revoke my math nerd license because I don't get it.  I think I understand all the parts but I just don't see why it's funny...
    Here's a limerick for you though:
    The integral z squared dzFrom one to the cubed root of threeTimes the cosineOf three pi over nineEquals log of the cube root of e.

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  5. ANNIE!!!!!! I love it!!! unfortunately, it seems the humor of multivariate calc is lost on the masses. I'll send it to my math major friends.

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