Tanya Khovanova's Math Blog

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.

Many years ago I conducted an experiment. I asked several sets of friends who had written joint math papers what they thought their individual contributions were. I asked them separately, of course. As the result of this experiment I formulated the conjecture:

The total of what joint authors estimate their contributions to be is always more than 100%.

Here is an actual example of answers I received from the two authors of a joint paper.

Author 1: My contribution is 80%. I suggested a breakthrough idea that made this paper possible. He just typed everything.

Author 2: My contribution is 80%. I did all the work. She just suggested a good idea.

You can see how the answers are synchronized. It is clear that both are telling the truth. People just tend to over-value their own input.

In other cases each author thinks that she or he generated the main idea. It doesn’t mean that one of them is lying. Very often they are absolutely sincere. Take this example of Alice and Bob, who are working on a paper together. Alice suggests that they might have better progress on their theorem if they consider graphs with symmetries first. Bob is engrossed in his thoughts and doesn’t register Alice’s suggestion. Next day, he comes up with an idea to add a group action on graphs. He sincerely believes that this was his own idea. It would be hard to know whether this had been provoked by Alice’s suggestion, or had come to Bob independently. Alice assumes that they are working on her idea.

When you acknowledge other people’s contribution, keep in mind that their perception might be different from yours. If you do not want to hurt other people’s feelings, you might consider inflating your gratitude.

The conjecture doesn’t apply to single-author papers. First of all, mathematicians never claim their contribution is 110% as non-mathematicians do. In many cases, especially when there are acknowledgements in the paper, it would be illogical to claim 100% contribution. Most mathematicians are logical, so if they are gracious enough to acknowledge the help of others, they are unlikely to claim 100%.

I would be curious to continue the experiment and either prove or disprove my conjecture. I’d appreciate your help. If you want to be part of this experiment, you can provide the following numbers in your comments: your average contribution to your own papers; and also your weighted average contribution to your joint papers.

My son, Alexey Radul, married Rebecca Frankel recently. They had a nerdy wedding. You can judge just how nerdy by this poem written and presented by Gremio (Gregory Marton), the best man:

In this summation, may there be no subtraction;
May you multiply blissfully, and find no division;
May the roots of the power of your love run deep;
May the logs of your joys be exponentially steep;
May you derive greatest pleasure from integrating your lives,
And well past your primes, retain composite rhymes.
This group gathered here, on that lush green field:
May we help you build proofs on the vows you just sealed.

Courtney Gibbons gave me her permission to add her webcomics to my collection of Funny Math Pictures.