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The Mathematical Funnybone

December 15, 2004

For Further Information, Contact:
Professor Paul Renteln
Chair, Department of Physics
California State University, San Bernardino
Email: prenteln@csusb.edu
Telephone: 909-880-5402

Providence, RI--

I locked my homework in the trunk, but a four-dimensional dog got in and ate it.
Mathematicians are usually thought of as highly serious folk who would never indulge in something so childish as joking around. But in fact, mathematicians have developed their own quirky genre of mathematical jokes suited to the peculiarities of their subject. And there is a whole class of jokes devoted to making fun of mathematicians and their strange ways.

In the article "Foolproof: A Sampling of Mathematical Folk Humor," renowned folklorist Alan Dundes and physicist Paul Renteln present a guided tour through mathematical humor, supplying plenty of examples along the way.

Some of the mathematical jokes follow established patterns like "the dog ate my homework", or this "light bulb" joke:

Q: How many number theorists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: This is not known, but it is conjectured to be an elegant prime.
There is a collection of jokes that parody phrases, like "proof by contradiction" or "proof by induction", that mathematicians use to characterize different types of proofs:
Proof by obfuscation: A long plotless sequence of true and/or meaningless syntactically related statements.
Proof by eminent authority: "I saw Karp in the elevator and he said it was probably NP-complete."
Some of the jokes make fun of mathematicians' impracticality, especially compared with engineers and physicists:
Three men with degrees in mathematics, physics, and biology are locked up in dark rooms for research reasons. A week later the researchers open the door and the biologist steps out and reports: "Well, I sat around until I started to get bored, then I searched the room and found a tin which I smashed on the floor. There was food in it which I ate when I got hungry. That's it." Then they free the man with the degree in physics and he says: "I walked along the walls to get an image of the room's geometry, then I searched it. There was a metal cylinder at five feet into the room and two feet left of the door. It felt like a tin and I threw it at the left wall at the right angle and velocity for it to crack open." Finally, the researchers open the third door and hear a faint voice out of the darkness: "Let C be an open can."
"We are persuaded that these data [about mathematical folklore] not only serve as a basis for identity among mathematicians but also provide a unique window on mathematical culture in general and even a clue as to the nature of mathematical thinking," write Dundes and Renteln.

Their article, "Foolproof: A Sampling of Mathematical Folk Humor", appears in the January 2005 issue of Notices of the AMS.

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