Laura Zirbel: Teaching

The following are some of my favorite jokes and stories. I'll try to keep adding more as well as provide a list of sources, where sources exist.

A math professor, a native Texan, was asked by one of his students: ''What is mathematics good for?''
He replied: ''This question makes me sick! If you show someone the Grand Canyon for the first time, and he asks you `What's it good for?' What would you do? Well, you kick that guy off the cliff!''

Four friends have been doing really well in their calculus class: they have been getting top grades for their homework and on the midterm. So, when it's time for the final, they decide not to study on the weekend before, but to drive to another friend's birthday party in another city - even though the exam is scheduled for Monday morning. As it happens, they drink too much at the party, and on Monday morning, they are all hung over and oversleep. When they finally arrive on campus, the exam is already over.
They go to the professor's office and offer him an explanation: ''We went to our friend's birthday party, and when we were driving back home very early on Monday morning, we suddenly had a flat tire. We had no spare one, and since we were driving on backroads, it took hours until we got help.''
The professor nods sympathetically and says: ''I see that it was not your fault. I will allow you to make up for the missed exam tomorrow morning.''
When they arrive early on Tuesday morning, the students are put by the professor in a large lecture hall and are seated so far apart from each other that, even if they tried, they had no chance to cheat. The exam booklets are already in place, and confidently, the students start writing. The first question - five points out of one hundred - is a simple exercise in integration, and all four finish it within ten minutes.
When the first of them has completed the problem, he turns over the page of the exam booklet and reads on the next one:
Problem 2 (95 points out of 100): Which tire went flat?

Lagrange wrote a paper believing he had found a proof of the parallel axiom... however at the talk he was giving about it, he read the first paragraph, and stopped, and said ''I must think about it again'' and left.

An infinite crowd of mathematicians enters a bar.
The first one orders a pint, the second one a half pint, the third one a quarter pint...
''I understand,'' says the bartender - and pours two pints.

A visitor at the Royal Tyrell Museum asks a museum employee: ''Can you tell me how old the skeleton of that T-Rex is?''
The employee responds ''It is precisely 60 million and three years, two months, and eighteen days old.''
'' But how can you know that with such precision?!''
''Well, when I started working here, one of the scientists told me that the skeleton was 60 million years old - and that was precisely three years, two months, and eighteen days ago...''

Teacher: Divide fourteen sugar cubes into three cups of coffee so that each cup has an odd number of sugar cubes in it.
Student: That's easy: one, one, and twelve.
Teacher: But twelve isn't odd!
Student: It's an odd number of cubes to put in a cup of coffee...

''The law of the excluded middle either rules or does not rule, OK?'' Graffiti

''In order to solve this differential equation you look at it till a solution occurs to you.'' Polya

A newlywed husband is discouraged by his wife's obsession with mathematics. Afraid of being second fiddle to her profession, he finally confronts her: ''Do you love math more than me?''
''Of course not, dear - I love you much more!''
Happy, although sceptical, he challenges her: ''Well, then prove it!''
Pondering a bit, she responds: ''Ok... Let epsilon be greater than zero...''

''We must believe in luck, otherwise how can we explain the success of those we don't like?'' Jean Cocteau

''There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.'' Mark Twain

''He uses statistics as a drunk uses a street lamp, for support rather than illumination.'' Andrew Lang

A mathematician happened to be at the legislature and convinced the Senate to postpone further consideration indefinitely....

''In science you want to say something that nobody knew before, in words everyone can understand, in poetry you are bound to say something everybody already knows in words that nobody can understand.'' Dirac

The mathematician wrote a letter to Tennyson, saying: In your poem ''Every moment dies a man, every moment one is born.'' But then population would be a constant, which it is not. So he suggested ''Every moment dies a man, every moment 1 1/6 is born.'' He said this was not completely accurate, but ''accurate enough for poetry.''

''No mathematician can be a complete mathematician unless he is also something of a poet.'' Weierstrass

''We have no knowledge, that is, no general principles drawn from the contemplation of particular facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure alone. The man of science, the chemist, the mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have to struggle with, know and feel this.'' Wordsworth

In California, Bill Honig, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, said he thought the general public should have a voice in defining what an excellent teacher should know. ''I would not leave the definition of math, ''Dr. Honig said, ''up to the mathematicians.'' NYT Oct 22, 1985

On an admissions exam:
Instructions: take 7 from 93 as many times as you can.
Student: I get 86 every time!

Two men are sitting in the basket of a balloon. For hours, they have been drifting through a thick layer of clouds, and they have lost orientation completely. Suddenly, the clouds part, and the two men see the top of a mountain with a man standing on it.

''Hey! Can you tell us where we are?!''
The man doesn't reply. The minutes pass as the balloon drifts past the mountain. When the balloon is about to be swallowed again by the clouds, the man on the mountain shouts: ''You're in a balloon!''
''That must have been a mathematician.''
''Why?''
''He thought long and thoroughly about what to say. What he eventually said was irrefutably correct. And it was of no use whatsoever...''

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