Top ten excuses for not doing the math homework :

1. I accidentally divided by zero and my paper burst into flames.
2. Isaac Newton's birthday.
3. I could only get arbitrarily close to my textbook. I couldn't actually reach it.
4. I have the proof, but there isn't room to write it in this margin.
5. I was watching the World Series and got tied up trying to prove that it converged.
6. I have a solar powered calculator and it was cloudy.
7. I locked the paper in my trunk but a four-dimensional dog got in and ate it.
8. I couldn't figure out whether i am the square of negative one or i is the square root of negative one.
9. I took time out to snack on a doughnut and a cup of coffee. I spent the rest of the night trying to figure which one to dunk.
10. I could have sworn I put the homework inside a Klein bottle, but this morning I couldn't find it.

The Flood is over and the ark has landed. Noah lets all the animals out and says, "Go forth and multiply."
A few months later, Noah decides to take a stroll and see how the animals are doing. Everywhere he looks he finds baby animals. Everyone is doing fine except for one pair of little snakes. "What's the problem?" says Noah. "Cut down some trees and let us live there", say the snakes.
Noah follows their advice. Several more weeks pass. Noah checks on the snakes again. Lots of little snakes, everybody is happy. Noah asks, "Want to tell me how the trees helped?"
"Certainly", say the snakes. "We're adders, so we need logs to multiply."

A bunch of Polish scientists decided to flee their repressive government by hijacking an airliner and forcing the pilot to fly them to a western country. They drove to the airport, forced their way on board a large passenger jet, and found there was no pilot on board. Terrified, they listened as the sirens got louder. Finally, one of the scientists suggested that since he was an experimentalist, he would try to fly the aircraft.
He sat down at the controls and tried to figure them out. The sirens got louder and louder. Armed men surrounded the jet. The would be pilot's friends cried out, "Please, please take off now!!! Hurry!!!"
The experimentalist calmly replied, "Have patience. I'm just a simple pole in a complex plane."

PI R Squared,... PI R Squared,... I never did understand that.
Where I come from PI are Round,... Cornbread R Squared!!

Top ln(e^10) reasons why e is better than pi :

10) e is easier to spell than pi.
9) pi ~= 3.14 while e ~=2.718281828459045.
8) The character for e can be found on a keyboard, but pi sure can't.
7) Everybody fights for their piece of the pie.
6) ln(pi^1) is a really nasty number, but ln(e^1) = 1.
5) e is used in calculus while pi is used in baby geometry.
4) 'e' is the most commonly picked vowel in Wheel of Fortune.
3) e stands for Euler's Number, pi doesn't stand for squat.
2) You don't need to know Greek to be able to use e.
1) You can't confuse e with a food product.

Top ten reasons why e is inferior to pi :

10) e is less challenging to spell than pi.
9) e ~=2.718281828459045, which can be easily memorized to its billionth place, whereas pi needs "skills" to be memorized.
8) The character for e is so cheap that it can be found on a keyboard. But is special (it's under "special symbols" in word processor programs.)
7) Pi is the bigger piece of pie.
6) e has an easy limit definition and infinite series. The limit definition of pi and the infinite series are much harder.
5) e you understand what it is even though you start learning it late when you're in pre-calculus. But pi, even after five or six years it's still hard to know what it really is.
4) People mistakenly confuse Euler's Number (e) with Euler's Constant (gamma). There is no confusion with the one and only .
3) e is named after a person, but pi stands for itself.
2) Pi is much shorter and easier to say than "Euler's Number".
1) To read pi, you don't have to know that Euler's name is really pronounced Oiler.

A mathematician went insane and believed that he was the differentiation operator. His friends had him placed in a mental hospital until he got better. All day he would go around frightening the other patients by staring at them and saying "I differentiate you!".
One day he met a new patient; and true to form he stared at him and said "I differentiate you!", but for once, his victim's expression didn't change. Surprised, the mathematician marshalled his energies, stared fiercely at the new patient and said loudly "I differentiate you!", but still the other man had no reaction. Finally, in frustration, the mathematician screamed out "I DIFFERENTIATE YOU!"
The new patient calmly looked up and said, "You can differentiate me all you like: I'm e to the x."

An engineer, a chemist and a mathematician are staying in three adjoining cabins at an old motel. First the engineer's coffee maker catches fire. He smells the smoke, wakes up, unplugs the coffee maker, throws it out the window, and goes back to sleep.
Later that night the chemist smells smoke too. He wakes up and sees that a cigarette butt has set the trash can on fire. He says to himself, "Hmm. How does one put out a fire? One can reduce the temperature of the fuel below the flash point, isolate the burning material from oxygen, or both. This could be accomplished by applying water." So he picks up the trash can, puts it in the shower stall, turns on the water, and, when the fire is out, goes back to sleep.
The mathematician, of course, has been watching all this out the window. So later, when he finds that his pipe ashes have set the bedsheet on fire, he is not in the least taken aback. He says: "Aha! A solution exists!" and goes back to sleep.

One day a mathematician decides that he is sick of math. So, he walks down to the fire department and announces that he wants to become a fireman. The fire chief says, "Well, you look like a good guy. I'd be glad to hire you, but first I have to give you a little test."
The firechief takes the mathematcian to the alley behind the fire department which contains a dumpster, a spicket, and a hose. The chief then says, "OK, you're walking in the alley and you see the dumpster here is on fire. What do you do?"
The mathematician replies, "Well, I hook up the hose to the spicket, turn the water on, and put out the fire."
The chief says, "That's great... perfect. Now I have to ask you just one more question. What do you do if you're walking down the alley and you see the dumpster is not on fire?"
The mathematician puzzles over the question for awhile and he finally says, "I light the dumpster on fire."
The chief yells, "What? That's horrible! Why would you light the dumpster on fire?"
The mathematician replies, "Well, that way I reduce the problem to one I've already solved."

A mathematician and an engineer attend a lecture by a physicist. The topic concerns Kulza-Klein theories involving physical processes that occur in spaces with dimensions of 9, 12 and even higher. The mathematician is sitting, clearly enjoying the lecture, while the engineer is frowning and looking generally confused and puzzled. By the end the engineer has a terrible headache. At the end, the mathematician comments about the wonderful lecture.
The engineer says "How do you understand this stuff?"
Mathematician: "I just visualize the process."
Engineer: "How can you visualize something that occurs in 9-dimensional space?"
Mathematician: "Easy, first visualize it in N-dimensional space, then let N go to 9."

A mathematician wandered home at 3 AM. His wife became very upset, telling him, "You're late! You said you'd be home by 11:45!" The mathematician replied, "I'm right on time. I said I'd be home by a quarter of twelve."

Two mathematicians are in a bar. The first one says to the second that the average person knows very little about basic mathematics. The second one disagrees, and claims that most people can cope with a reasonable amount of math.
The first mathematician goes off to the washroom, and in his absence the second calls over the waitress. He tells her that in a few minutes, after his friend has returned, he will call her over and ask her a question. All she has to do is answer one third x cubed.
She repeats "one thir -- dex cue"?
He repeats "one third x cubed".
Her: `one thir dex cuebd'? Yes, that's right, he says. So she agrees, and goes off mumbling to herself, "one thir dex cuebd...".
The first guy returns and the second proposes a bet to prove his point, that most people do know something about basic math. He says he will ask the blonde waitress an integral, and the first laughingly agrees. The second man calls over the waitress and asks "what is the integral of x squared?".
The waitress says "one third x cubed" and while walking away, turns back and says over her shoulder "plus a constant!"

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them, they translate it into their own language, and forthwith it means something entirely different.

Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs and 50 percent imagination.

Why did the chicken cross the Möbius strip?
To get to the same side.

A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.

Mathematics Revisited

Life is complex. It has real and imaginary components.
What keeps a square from moving? Square roots, of course.
The law of the excluded middle either rules or does not rule.
In the topological hell the beer is packed in Klein's bottles.
To a mathematician, real life is a special case.
I heard that parallel lines actually do meet, but they are very discrete.
In modern mathematics, algebra has become so important that numbers will soon only have symbolic meaning.

How mathematicians do it...

Combinatorists do it as many ways as they can.
Combinatorists do it discretely.
(Logicians do it) or [not (logicians do it)].
Logicians do it by symbolic manipulation.
Algebraists do it in groups.
Algebraists do it in a ring.
Algebraists do it in a field.
Analysts do it continuously.
Real analysts do it almost everywhere.
Pure mathematicians do it rigorously.
Topologists do it openly.
Topologists do it on rubber sheets.
Dynamicists do it chaotically.
Mathematicians do it forever if they can do one and can do one more.
Cantor did it diagonally.
Fermat tried to do it in the margin, but couldn't fit it in.
Galois did it the night before.
Möbius always does it on the same side.
Markov does it in chains.
Newton did it standing on the shoulders of giants.
Turing did it but couldn't decide if he'd finished.