Mathematics: my curse, er... course

Medicine makes people ill, mathematics make them sad and theology makes them sinful. (Martin Luther)

Mathematics is like checkers in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state. (Plato)

Math is like love; a simple idea, but it can get complicated.



A Mathematician and...


The physicist and the engineer are in a hot-air balloon. Soon, they find themselves lost in a canyon somewhere. They yell out for help: "Helllloooooo! Where are we?"
15 minutes later, they hear an echoing voice: "Helllloooooo! You're in a hot-air balloon!!"
The physicist says, "That must have been a mathematician."
The engineer asks, "Why do you say that?"
The physicist replied: "The answer was absolutely correct, and it was utterly useless."

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Q: What will a logician choose: a half of an egg or eternal bliss in the afterlife? A: A half of an egg! Because nothing is better than eternal bliss in the afterlife, and a half of an egg is better than nothing.

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When a statistician passes the airport security check, they discover a bomb in his bag. He explains. "Statistics shows that the probability of a bomb being on an airplane is 1/1000. However, the chance that there are two bombs at one plane is 1/1000000. So, I am much safer..."

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A team of engineers were required to measure the height of a flag pole. They only had a measuring tape, and were getting quite frustrated trying to keep the tape along the pole. It kept falling down, etc. A mathematician comes along, finds out their problem, and proceeds to remove the pole from the ground and measure it easily. When he leaves, one engineer says to the other: "Just like a mathematician! We need to know the height, and he gives us the length!"

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A biologist, a physicist and a mathematician were sitting in a street cafe watching the crowd. Across the street they saw a man and a woman entering a building. Ten minutes they reappeared together with a third person.
- They have multiplied, said the biologist.
- Oh no, an error in measurement, the physicist sighed.
- If exactly one person enters the building now, it will be empty again, the mathematician concluded.

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Dictionary of Definitions of Terms Commonly Used in Math. lectures.

CLEARLY:

I don't want to write down all the "in- between" steps.

TRIVIAL:

If I have to show you how to do this, you're in the wrong class.

OBVIOUSLY:

I hope you weren't sleeping when we discussed this earlier, because I refuse to repeat it.

RECALL:

I shouldn't have to tell you this, but for those of you who erase your memory tapes after every test...

WLOG (Without Loss Of Generality):

I'm not about to do all the possible cases, so I'll do one and let you figure out the rest.

IT CAN EASILY BE SHOWN:

Even you, in your finite wisdom, should be able to prove this without me holding your hand.

CHECK or CHECK FOR YOURSELF:

This is the boring part of the proof, so you can do it on your own time.

SKETCH OF A PROOF:

I couldn't verify all the details, so I'll break it down into the parts I couldn't prove.

HINT:

The hardest of several possible ways to do a proof.

SOFT PROOF:

One third less filling (of the page) than your regular proof, but it requires two extra years of course work just to understand the terms.

ELEGANT PROOF:

Requires no previous knowledge of the subject matter and is less than ten lines long.

SIMILARLY:

At least one line of the proof of this case is the same as before.

TFAE (The Following Are Equivalent):

If I say this it means that, and if I say that it means the other thing, and if I say the other thing...

BY A PREVIOUS THEOREM:

I don't remember how it goes (come to think of it I'm not really sure we did this at all), but if I stated it right (or at all), then the rest of this follows.

TWO LINE PROOF:

I'll leave out everything but the conclusion, you can't question 'em if you can't see 'em.

BRIEFLY:

I'm running out of time, so I'll just write and talk faster.

PROOF OMITTED:

Trust me, It's true.

Professional secrets.

The highest moments in the life of a mathematician are the first few moments after one has proved the result, but before one finds the mistake.


Golden rule of deriving: never trust any result that was proved after 11 PM.


Relations between pure and applied mathematicians are based on trust and understanding. Namely, pure mathematicians do not trust applied mathematicians, and applied mathematicians do not understand pure mathematicians.

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
-- Isaac Newton

In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
-- Gerald Holton

If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.
-- Hal Abelson

Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders.
-- Gauss

Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders while computer scientists stand on each other's toes.
-- Richard Hamming

It has been said that physicists stand on one another's shoulders. If this is the case, then programmers stand on one another's toes, and software engineers dig each other's graves.
-- Unknown

These days, even the most pure and abstract mathematics is in danger to be applied.

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Salary Theorem
The less you know, the more you make.
Proof:

Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power.
Postulate 2: Time is Money.

As every engineer knows: Power = Work / Time
And since Knowledge = Power and Time = Money
It is therefore true that Knowledge = Work / Money .
Solving for Money, we get:
Money = Work / Knowledge
Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of Work done.

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Q: how many times can you subtract 7 from 83, and what is left afterwards?
A: I can subtract it as many times as I want, and it leaves 76 every time.

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One day, Jesus said to his disciples: "The Kingdom of Heaven is like 3x squared plus 8x minus 9." St. Thomas looked very confused and asked St. Peter: "What does the teacher mean?" St.Peter replied: "Don't worry - it's just another one of his parabolas."


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Q:What is a proof?
A: One-half percent of alcohol.

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Q:What is a dilemma?
A: A lemma that proves two results.

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Another von Neumann quote : Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things, you just get used to them.

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This poem was written by John Saxon (an author of math textbooks).
((12 + 144 + 20 + (3 * 4^(1/2))) / 7) + (5 * 11) = 9^2 + 0

A Dozen, a Gross and a Score,
plus three times the square root of four,
divided by seven,
plus five times eleven,
equals nine squared and not a bit more.