Tanya Khovanova's Math Blog

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—What do you get when a bunch of sheep hang out in a circle?
—Shepherd’s pi.

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—What do you call a metric cookie?
—A gram cracker.

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—What state has the most math teachers?
—Math-achusetts.

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—What does a hungry math teacher like to eat?
—A square meal.

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—What is the mathematician’s favorite season?
—Sum-mer.

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—What adds, subtracts, multiplies, divides, and bumps into light bulbs?
—A moth-ematician.

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—What tools do you use for math?
—Multi-pliers.

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—Why didn’t the quarter roll down the hill with the nickel?
—Because it had more cents!

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—Which snakes are good at math?
—Adders.

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—What is the butterfly’s favorite subject in school?
—Moth-ematics.

Recently, I decided to stop avoiding puns and childish math jokes. So I am posting a lot of famous jokes I have heard before but never added to my collection.

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—What are ten things you can always count on?
—Your fingers.

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—Why should you never mention the number 288?
—Because it’s two gross.

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—Why did the two 4’s skip lunch?
—They already 8!

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—How do you make one vanish?
—Add a “g” to the beginning.

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—Why was 6 afraid of 7?
—Because 7 8 9.

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—How do deaf mathematicians communicate?
—With sine language.

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—Why don’t math majors throw house parties?
—Because it’s dangerous to drink and derive.

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—What’s the official animal of Pi day?
—The Pi-thon!

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—What do you get when you take the sun and divide its circumference by its diameter?
—Pi in the sky.

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—Who’s the king of the pencil case?
—The ruler.

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—Why was the inchworm angry?
—He had to convert to the metric system.

I’ve been collecting math jokes for many years, but I was avoiding puns, mostly because of my English. Puns are among the most difficult things to master in a language. Here are some punny jokes that I finally understand.

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—Who invented the Round Table?
—Sir Cumference.

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—Why didn’t the hyperbola feel sick?
—It was asymptote-matic.

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—Which triangles are the coldest?
—Ice-sosceles triangles.

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—What’s the one shape you should avoid at all costs?
—A TRAP-ezoid.

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—What do you call more than one L?
—Parallel.

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—What do you call a number that can’t keep still?
—A Roamin’ Numeral.

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A math problem is the only place where a person buys 7744 watermelons for dinner, but no one knows why!

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Today I saw a tweet from someone I knew in middle school. He tweeted, “I turned my life around 360 degrees!” Now do you see why it is important to study math?

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Looking for energy? Multiply time by power!

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The mom of a third grader calls her friend, “Lucy, did you do your son’s math homework?”
“I did.”
“Can I copy your answers?”

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If money is measured in piles, then I have a pit.

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My girlfriend is the square root of −100. She’s a perfect 10, but purely imaginary.

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A mathematical collapse: while cutting a worm, you divide it by 2 and multiply it by 2, simultaneously!

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The teacher asks a student,
“Johnny, how much will your mom pay at the market for three pounds of apples if one pound is three dollars?”
“I do not know,” answers Johnny, “My mom loves bargaining, and she is good at it.”

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The teacher asks a student,
“Johnny, in a 5-story building, you have to go up 30 stairs to get from one floor to the next. If you go from the first to the fifth floor, how many stairs do you have to take?”
“All of them,” answers Johnny.

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The teacher asks a student,
“Johnny, you have 10 dollars in your pocket. You ask your dad for 10 more. How much money will you have?”
“I will have 10 dollars.”
“You do not know your math!”
“You do not know my dad!”

Putin’s bodyguards `collect his excrement on trips abroad and take it back to Russia with them’. This was an article in the Independent. Presumably, Putin is afraid that someone can analyze his waste to get information about his health. Here is a quote from the article.

According to the report, members of the Russian president’s Federal Protection Service (FPS) are responsible for collecting his bodily waste in specialised packets which are then placed in a dedicated briefcase for the journey home.

Here is my joke on the subject.

Joke. Putin’s guard collecting his waste wrote a book of memoirs. The book has two chapters: Number One and Number Two.

My former IMO coach, Gregory Galperin, converted a famous joke into a logic puzzle, adding a variation.

Puzzle. Ten logicians walked into a cafe. Each knew whether they wanted tea or coffee, but no one knew each other’s preferences. When they sat at a table, the waiter asked loudly, “Will everyone be having coffee?” Then the waiter went around the table, writing down each person’s answer.
There were three possible answers: “I don’t know”, “Yes”, and “No”. All answers were truthful and spoken loudly so that all group members heard them.

1. Suppose the first nine people said, “I don’t know”, and the tenth person said, “Yes”. How many of them wanted coffee?
2. Suppose the sixth and the seventh answers were not the same. How many people said, “I don’t know”, how many said, “No”, and how many said, “Yes”. Find the smallest number of people who for sure would have ordered coffee and the smallest number who for sure would have wanted tea?

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I hate getting into debates about Möbius strips. They’re always one-sided.

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North Korea’s ballistic missile test failed due to a bug in Windows. The next missile containing a bug report has been automatically sent to Microsoft.

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4 out of 3 people have trouble with fractions.

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Do you know what seems odd to me?
Numbers that aren’t divisible by two.

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Why was algebra so easy for the Romans? X was always 10.

Here is the current picture of my coauthor, Joel Lewis. I remember him from many years ago when he was a graduate student at MIT. I am glad he kept his big smile.

Back to the subject matter. Joel Lewis made a comment on my recent post, thinking-outside-the-box ideas. He mentioned his two theorems:

The Big Point Theorem. Any three lines intersect at a point, provided that the point is big enough.

The Thick Line Theorem. Any three points lie on the same line, provided that the line is thick enough.

Drabble cartoon, Jun 15 1987, by Kevin Fagan.