Tanya Khovanova’s Math Blog

Two month ago I made a minor rearrangement of my math humor page. The traffic to that page tripled. Would you like to know what I did? I collected all the suggestive jokes in one chapter and named it Dirty Math Jokes.

Mathematics is so far from sex that stumbling on a math sex joke is always a special treat.

Combinatorialists do it discretely.

When those jokes were randomly placed in my joke file, it was easy to miss flirtatious connotations.

She was only a mathematician’s daughter, and she sure learned how to multiply using square roots.

So I decided to collect them together in one place.

Math Problem: A mother is 21 years older than her son. In 6 years she will be 5 times as old as her son. Where is the father?

Alexey translated from a Russian joke site:

American scientists finally developed a car that runs on water. Unfortunately, at the moment it only runs on water from the Gulf of Mexico.

Heard somewhere:

Teacher: What’s bigger: 22/7 or 3.14?
Student: They are equal.
Teacher: Why do you say that?!
Student: They are both equal to π.

I love Raymond Smullyan’s books , especially the trick puzzles he includes. The first time I met him in person, he played a trick on me.

This happened at the Gathering for Gardner 8. We were introduced and then later that day, the conference participants were treated to a dinner event that included a magic show. In one evening I saw more close-up magic tricks than I had in my whole life. This left me lightheaded, doubting physics and my whole scientific outlook on life.

Afterwards, Raymond Smullyan joined me in the elevator. “Do you want to see a magic trick?” he asked. “I bet I can kiss you without touching you.” I was caught off guard. At that moment I believed anything was possible. I agreed to the bet.

He asked me to close my eyes, kissed me on the cheek and laughed, “I lost.”

Just received from Victor Gutenmacher:

Fibonacci salad: For today’s salad, mix yesterday’s leftover salad with that of the day before.

First Name: David
Last Name: (hidden for privacy protection)
Year of Birth: (hidden for privacy protection)
email: buchanan1985@gmail.com

Only at MIT. Room 4-231.

* * *

Birthdays are beneficial for your health. A new breakthrough statistical study unequivocally proved that the more birthdays one has the longer one lives.

* * *

We know through Erdös that “a mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems”. It thus follows by duality that a comathematician is a device for turning cotheorems into ffee.

* * *

- What do you do when you see a beautiful girl?
- I download her.

* * *

Programmers wear red T-shirts to match the color of their eyes.

* * *

We invented the decimal system, because humans have ten fingers on their hands; and 32-bit computers, because humans have 32 teeth in their mouths.

* * *

A general shows off a new tank and boasts:
- You see a tank supplied with the most modern computer technology.
- What is the speed of its computer?
- The same as the speed of the tank, of course.

I could no longer resist: I added a section of physics jokes to my math jokes collection:

* * *

A hydrogen atom says to the bartender, “Hey buddy, have you seen an electron around here? I seem to have lost mine.”
“Are you sure you lost it?” the bartender asks.
And the hydrogen atom answers, “I’m positive!”

* * *

Heisenberg gets stopped on the motorway by the police.
Cop: “Do you know how fast you were going sir?”
Heisenberg: “No, but I know exactly where I am.”

* * *

A photon checks into a hotel. The bellhop asks him, “Can I help you with your luggage?”
To which the photon replies, “I don’t have any. I’m traveling light.”

I added my favorite webcomics from “Not So Humple Pi” to my collection of funny math pictures.