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THE STORY OF BABEL:

In the beginning there was only one kind of Mathematician,
created by the Great Mathamatical Spirit form the Book: the
Topologist. And they grew to large numbers and prospered.

One day they looked up in the heavens and desired to reach up
as far as the eye could see. So they set out in building a
Mathematical edifice that was to reach up as far as “up” went.
Further and further up they went … until one night the edifice
collapsed under the weight of paradox.

The following morning saw only rubble where there once was a huge
structure reaching to the heavens. One by one, the Mathematicians
climbed out from under the rubble. It was a miracle that nobody was
killed; but when they began to speak to one another, SUPRISE of all
suprises! they could not understand each other. They all spoke
different languages. They all fought amongst themselves and each went
about their own way. To this day the Topologists remain the original
Mathematicians.

                 - adapted from an American Indian legend

                   of the Mound Of Babel

So one day, some smarty-pants asked him, “Ok. Prove that
you’re the Pope.”

He thought for a while and proclaimed, “I am one. The Pope
is one. Therefore, the Pope and I are one.”

Three men are in a hot-air balloon. Soon, they find themselves lost in a canyon somewhere. One of the three men says, “I’ve got an idea. We can call for help in this canyon and the echo will carry our voices far.”

So he leans over the basket and yells out, “Helllloooooo!
Where are we?” (They hear the echo several times).

15 minutes later, they hear this echoing voice: “Helllloooooo!
You’re lost!!”

One of the men says, “That must have been a mathematician.”

Puzzled, one of the other men asks, “Why do you say that?” The reply: “For three reasons.

(1) he took a long time to answer,
(2) he was absolutely correct, and
(3) his answer was absolutely useless.”

          3^(1/3)

        /

       |  2            3 x 3.14           3_

       | z dz  x  cos( ----------) = ln (\/e )

       |                  9

      /

       1

Which, of course, translates to:

Integral z-squared dz

from 1 to the cube root of 3

times the cosine

of three pi over 9

equals log of the cube root of ‘e’.

And it’s correct, too.

Doug Walker, SAS Institute

Corrected by Joshua P. Gruber

There was a mad scientist ( a mad …social… scientist ) who kidnapped
three colleagues, an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician, and locked
each of them in seperate cells with plenty of canned food and water but no
can opener.

A month later, returning, the mad scientist went to the engineer’s cell and
found it long empty. The engineer had constructed a can opener from pocket
trash, used aluminum shavings and dried sugar to make an explosive, and
escaped.

The physicist had worked out the angle necessary to knock the lids off the tin
cans by throwing them against the wall. She was developing a good pitching arm
and a new quantum theory.

The mathematician had stacked the unopened cans into a surprising solution to
the kissing problem; his dessicated corpse was propped calmly against a wall,
and this was inscribed on the floor in blood:

Theorem: If I can’t open these cans, I’ll die.

Proof: assume the opposite…

Heisenberg might have slept here.

A: Because he left a residue at every pole.

Q: Why is it that the more accuracy you demand from an interpolation
function, the more expensive it becomes to compute?

A: That’s the Law of Spline Demand.

A: An abelian grape.

Q: What’s yellow, and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice?

A: Zorn’s Lemon.