Tanya Khovanova's Math Blog

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.

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My daughter was talking at her kindergarten about what her parents do for work. She said that her mom catches bugs, invokes demons, and talks to clods.

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I have neither Twitter nor Instagram. I just go for a walk to tell strangers what I ate and drank and how things are at work and at home. I have three followers: a doctor and two policemen.

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Life is like Rubik’s cube: fix one side, better not look at the rest.

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My Roomba just devoured a piece of cheese I wanted to pick up and eat. The war between humans and robots is already here.

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I surveyed many people who had played Russian roulette. Seems like the probability of dying is actually 0%.

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What has the probability of one in five million?
Zero: there’s no 1 in 5000000. Only a five and six zeros.

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Two classmates:
—What did you think of our probability exam yesterday?
—All means to an end.

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My classmate didn’t study for our test in probability.
“I’ll take my chances”, he said.

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I saw my math teacher with a piece of graph paper yesterday. I think he must be plotting something.

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Not all math puns are terrible. Just sum.

* * * (submitted by Sergei Bernstein)

A programmer walks into a bar, holds up two fingers, and says, “I’ll have three beers please.”

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What is the similarity between me and an experiment involving a biased coin with two tails?
The probability of getting a head is zero.