Can You Solve This Hilarious Limit Problem Involving Sine and Infinity?

  • Context: High School 
  • Thread starter Thread starter benorin
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Jokes
Click For Summary

Discussion Overview

The thread revolves around humorous mathematical problems and jokes, particularly focusing on limits, integrals, and playful wordplay related to mathematics. Participants share various jokes, puns, and light-hearted mathematical expressions, creating a playful atmosphere around mathematical concepts.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Debate/contested
  • Meta-discussion

Main Points Raised

  • One participant presents a limit problem involving sine and infinity, suggesting it as a joke that may not be understood by all.
  • Several participants express confusion about the joke, indicating varying levels of mathematical understanding.
  • Multiple jokes and humorous mathematical expressions are shared, including puns related to integrals and playful interpretations of mathematical terms.
  • Participants discuss a specific integral joke involving "cabin" and "houseboat," with some expressing uncertainty about its humor.
  • One participant shares a limerick that combines calculus with humor, while others contribute additional jokes and humorous anecdotes related to mathematics.
  • There are references to famous mathematicians and their quotes, adding a historical and meta-humorous layer to the discussion.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally share a light-hearted approach to mathematics, but there is no consensus on the understanding or humor of specific jokes. Some participants find certain jokes amusing while others do not, indicating a mix of agreement and disagreement on the humor presented.

Contextual Notes

Some jokes rely on specific mathematical knowledge or cultural references that may not be universally understood, leading to varying interpretations among participants.

Who May Find This Useful

This discussion may be of interest to those who enjoy mathematical humor, including students and educators in mathematics, as well as individuals looking for light-hearted content related to math and its concepts.

benorin
Science Advisor
Insights Author
Messages
1,442
Reaction score
191
So here it is: prove that \lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}\frac{\sin x}{n}=6

Hint: algebra I students may not get the joke, but to them the proof comes easy.

Okay, so let them flow... post 'em if you got 'em [jokes, that is] .
 
Physics news on Phys.org
I don't get the joke.. I am a calculus student.
 
You divide the sin(x) by n to get six = 6. Wow, that is a new low for math jokes lol.
 
Q: Why do computer scientists always confuse Halloween and Christmas?

A: Because 31 OCT(al) = 25 DEC(imal).
 
One of my favorites, find:

\int\frac{1}{cabin}d(cabin)This next one isn't a joke so much as it is a cute poem. What does it say?

\frac{12+144+20+3\sqrt{4}}{7}+5\times 11=9^2+0
 
Last edited:
shmoe said:
One of my favorites, find:

\int\frac{1}{cabin}d(cabin)

Houseboat! :smile:
 
shmoe said:
One of my favorites, find:

\int\frac{1}{cabin}d(cabin)


This next one isn't a joke so much as it is a cute poem. What does it say?

\frac{12+144+20+3\sqrt{4}}{7}+5\times 11=9^2+0
Help me out here shmoe. :smile:

\int\frac{d\left(\text{cabin}\right)}{\text{cabin}}=\ln{\left(\text{cabin}\right)}
 
Well done. Out of a typical first year calculus class, usually one or two students will shout out "log cabin", causing much groaning in the classroom. I then get to proclaim "Close, it's actually a houseboat" and get confused stares. "You forgot the C!" prompts even louder groans, a double whammy.
 
shmoe said:
Well done. Out of a typical first year calculus class, usually one or two students will shout out "log cabin", causing much groaning in the classroom. I then get to proclaim "Close, it's actually a houseboat" and get confused stares. "You forgot the C!" prompts even louder groans, a double whammy.
Nice, I like that one.
 
  • #10
I'll put the poem in white below, highlight to see clearly:


A dozen, a gross, and a score,
Plues three times the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plues five times eleven,
Is nine squared, and not a bit more
 
  • #11
shmoe said:
I'll put the poem in white below, highlight to see clearly:

A dozen, a gross, and a score,
Plues three times the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plues five times eleven,
Is nine squared, and not a bit more
Keep 'em coming :smile:
 
  • #12
Here's one I made up
Q: How do you tell that a sailor used to be a mathematician?
A: Instead of saying "aye aye, captain!", he says "negative one, captain!"
 
  • #13
**Warning: this may sound inappropriate, and uses suggestive language !

Professor to aspiring female math student:
*"HEY! :eek: How would YOU like to integrate my natural log??"

Female math student-->says: "!"

(:smile: High school humor :rolleyes:)
 
  • #14
ummmm not sure how that integral makes a houseboat. i get the log cabin part though.

here's my favourite math joke:

\lim_{8\rightarrow9} \sqrt{8} = 3
 
  • #15
Q: What is the difference between a mathematician and a computer scientist?

A: A mathematician and a computer scientist work side by side in the basement of a building. Every day, they go up to the second floor at 10am for coffee. One day at 10am, they are both on the first floor and leave to get their coffee. The computer scientist hops in the elevator and goes to the second floor for his coffee. The mathematician, however, gets in the elevator, goes to the basement to reduce the problem to a problem with a known solution, and then goes to the second floor for his coffee.

josh
 
  • #16
simplify the expression:

(\frac{1}{m^{-1}})(e^1)(r^2)(\sqrt{y^2})(\frac{d}{dx}\frac{x^2}{2})(\frac{force}{acceleration})
 
  • #17
fourier jr said:
ummmm not sure how that integral makes a houseboat. i get the log cabin part though.

A log cabin + sea (C) = a houseboat

It is indeed a terrible joke.


This is supposedly elementary school humour but I only heard it recently (I'm not in elementary school anymore, but my sense of humour is):

Q: Why was six afraid of seven?
A: Because seven ate nine.
 
  • #18
kreil said:
simplify the expression:
(\frac{1}{m^{-1}})(e^1)(r^2)(\sqrt{y^2})(\frac{d}{dx}\frac{x^2}{2})(\frac{force}{acceleration})
Merry Christmas!
 
  • #19
Wow, nice apmcavoy!
 
  • #20
Much like the ski lodge full of girls hunting for husbands and husbands hunting for girls, things aren't always quite as symmetric as they seem. --[I don't remember]

Now when Heisenberg noticed that, he was really scared. --Paul Dirac, Quoted in D MacHale, Comic Sections (Dublin 1993)

...it would be better for the true physics if there were no mathematicians on earth. -- Daniel Bernoulli, Quoted in The Mathematical Intelligencer 13 (1991).

[Upon losing the use of his right eye:] Now I will have less distraction. --Leonhard Euler, Quoted in H Eves In Mathematical Circles (Boston 1969).

I recall once saying that when I had given the same lecture several times I couldn't help feeling that they really ought to know it by now. --John E Littlewood, A Mathematician's Miscellany, 1953.
 
  • #21
let epsilon be < 0...
 
  • #22
What's an anagram of Banach-Tarski?

Banach-Tarski Banach-Tarski
 
  • #23
benorin said:
I recall once saying that when I had given the same lecture several times I couldn't help feeling that they really ought to know it by now. --John E Littlewood, A Mathematician's Miscellany, 1953.

That is my fav, provided "they" means "his students".

I've seen Dirac's quote on several occasions but I don't understand what's funny with it.

Here's one that's pretty funnny nowdays:

"To divide a cube into two other cubes, a fourth power or in general any power whatever into two powers of the same denomination above the second is impossible, and I have assuredly found an admirable proof of this, but the margin is too narrow to contain it. -- Fermat, in the margin of his copy of Diophantus' Arithmetica"

Another:

"Napier's logarithms, by shortening the labours, doubled the life of the astronomer." --Laplace

and another...

"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite." --Dirac
 
  • #24
Love and Tensor Algebra

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!

Come, every frustrum longs to be a cone
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.

For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Bools or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?

Cancel me not - for what then shall remain?
Abscissas some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine!
the product o four scalars is defines!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
Cuts capers like a happy haversine.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a^2 cos 2 phi!


--from "The Cyberiad" by Stanislaw Lem
 
  • #25
Complex variables are always fun until someone loses an i.
 
  • #26
The number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.


What do you get when you cross a tse-tse fly and a mountan climber?

Nothing! You can't cross a vector with a scalar!
 
  • #27
Oh, here's a limerick:

<br /> \int_1^{\sqrt[3]{3}} z^2 \, dz \cdot \cos \frac{3 \pi}{9} = \ln \sqrt[3]{e}<br />
 
  • #28
Hurkyl said:
Oh, here's a limerick:
<br /> \int_1^{\sqrt[3]{3}} z^2 \, dz \cdot \cos \frac{3 \pi}{9} = \ln \sqrt[3]{e}<br />
Wow... :smile:
 
  • #29
Hurkyl said:
Oh, here's a limerick:

<br /> \int_1^{\sqrt[3]{3}} z^2 \, dz \cdot \cos \frac{3 \pi}{9} = \ln \sqrt[3]{e}<br />
I don't get it.
 
  • #30
ya me neither. & that cabin joke is actually pretty bad now that i get it. :rolleyes:
 

Similar threads

  • · Replies 9 ·
Replies
9
Views
2K
  • · Replies 9 ·
Replies
9
Views
3K
  • · Replies 3 ·
Replies
3
Views
2K
  • · Replies 18 ·
Replies
18
Views
2K
Replies
15
Views
9K
  • · Replies 2 ·
Replies
2
Views
2K
  • · Replies 6 ·
Replies
6
Views
2K
  • · Replies 5 ·
Replies
5
Views
3K
  • · Replies 2 ·
Replies
2
Views
3K
  • · Replies 4 ·
Replies
4
Views
2K