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

[Data]

There are 10 types of people: Those who know trinary, those who don't, and those who think I just screwed up a binary joke

ahahah, that one's good

 

[fopc]

Here's a story (perhaps more than just a joke) told by Stan Ulam many years ago.

"Chen Ning Yang, Nobel Prize in Physics (1957), tells a joke which illustrates an aspect of the intellectual relationship between physicists and mathematicians at present. One afternoon, a group of friends came to a city. They had to wash their clothes, so they searched the streets looking for a laundry. They found a place with the shop-sign on the window: WE WASH CLOTHES. One of them went in and asked: 'Can we leave our clothes here for a wash?' The owner answered: 'We don't wash clothes here.' - 'How's that?' asked the newcomer, 'there is a sign on the window that says you do.' - 'We make shop-signs', was the answer. Something similar happens here. We mathematicians make shop-signs for any trade. Physicists use them."

 

[Feldoh]

A chemist, a physicist, and a mathematician are stranded on an island when a can of food rolls ashore. The chemist and the physicist comes up with many ingenious ways to open the can. Then suddenly the mathematician gets a bright idea: "Assume we have a can opener ..."

Sad, but true:
The Evolution of Math Teaching

1960s: A peasant sells a bag of potatoes for $10. His costs amount to 4/5 of his selling price. What is his profit?
1970s: A farmer sells a bag of potatoes for $10. His costs amount to 4/5 of his selling price, that is, $8. What is his profit?
1970s (new math): A farmer exchanges a set P of potatoes with set M of money. The cardinality of the set M is equal to 10, and each element of M is worth $1. Draw ten big dots representing the elements of M. The set C of production costs is composed of two big dots less than the set M. Represent C as a subset of M and give the answer to the question: What is the cardinality of the set of profits?
1980s: A farmer sells a bag of potatoes for $10. His production costs are $8, and his profit is $2. Underline the word "potatoes" and discuss with your classmates.
1990s: A farmer sells a bag of potatoes for $10. His or her production costs are 0.80 of his or her revenue. On your calculator, graph revenue vs. costs. Run the POTATO program to determine the profit. Discuss the result with students in your group. Write a brief essay that analyzes this example in the real world of economics.

I've got one similar to that, but it's a bit darker:
1. Teaching Math In 1950
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100.. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

2. Teaching Math In 1960
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

3. Teaching Math In 1970
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit?

4. Teaching Math In 1980
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

5. Teaching Math In 1990
A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands.. He does this so he can make a profit of $20.
What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers.)

6. Teaching Math In 2006
Un hachero vende una carretada de maderapara $100. El costo de la producciones es $80.

 

[tpm]

- What's purple and commutative?--> An Abelian Grape

- What's Yellow normed and complete --> A Bananach space..

 

[andybham]

what do you get if you cross a pig and a rat?

 

[tpm]

what do you get if you cross a pig and a rat?

A journal referee?.. i suppose they're right all the paper are PIG-reviewed.

 

[andybham]

A journal referee?.. i suppose they're right all the paper are PIG-reviewed.

No, lol!

|pig||rat|*sin(x)

Hah, sorry, that is terrible!

 

[LukeD]

but that's just its size

sorry, I'm killing it even worse

 

[radou]

Didn't bother checking if this one has already been posted, but anyway:

Let \epsilon < 0.

 

[Dathascome]

I didn't read through all 11 pages so I hope no one said these.

There are 3 types of mathematicians in the world...those who can count, and those who can't.


My quantum mechanics professor a few years ago said this one.

Q:Why doesn't Heisenberg live in the suburbs?

A: Because he doesn't like to commute.

 

[radou]

Confusing one single letter can turn a homomorphism into a dog.

 

[bit188]

Oh my God. I found this on another forum:

A mathematician and an engineer agreed to take part in a psychological test. They sat on one side of a room and waited not knowing what to expect. A door opened on the other side and a naked woman came in the room and stood on the far side. They were then instructed that every time they heard a beep they could move half the remaining distance to the woman. They heard a beep and the engineer jumped up and moved halfway across the room while the mathematician continued to sit, looking disgusted and bored. When the mathematician didn't move after the second beep he was asked why. "Because I know I will never reach the woman." The engineer was asked why he chose to move and replied, "Because I know that very soon I will be close enough for all practical purposes!"

 

[Thrice]

Wow this thread is bad... :D

 

[DeadWolfe]

Confusing one single letter can turn a homomorphism into a dog.

...I don't get it.

 

[Reshma]

Oh my God. I found this on another forum:

A mathematician and an engineer agreed to take part in a psychological test. They sat on one side of a room and waited not knowing what to expect. A door opened on the other side and a naked woman came in the room and stood on the far side. They were then instructed that every time they heard a beep they could move half the remaining distance to the woman. They heard a beep and the engineer jumped up and moved halfway across the room while the mathematician continued to sit, looking disgusted and bored. When the mathematician didn't move after the second beep he was asked why. "Because I know I will never reach the woman." The engineer was asked why he chose to move and replied, "Because I know that very soon I will be close enough for all practical purposes!"

Oh, he means Zeno's paradox!

 

[Reshma]

Confusing one single letter can turn a homomorphism into a dog.

Does it mean DoG (Domain of G) ??

 

[radou]

Does it mean DoG (Domain of G) ??

Nah, I meant kernels vs. kennels.

 

[CompuChip]

No harm done. I was also sort of impatient with you...it's exam time, you see.

In the spirit of your joke:

Stupid people will always make more money.

Proof:

By definition,

Power = Work / Time

Rearranging:

Time = Work / Power

Time IS Money, and Knowledge IS Power, so substituting:

Money = Work / Knowledge

Therefore, as knowledge goes to 0, money goes to infinity, regardless of the work being done (if Work > 0 and it is impossible to have negative knowledge).

You said indeed, if Work > 0. But if Work is identically zero (which is not uncommon for stupid people) then Money is the limit of 0 / Knowledge and hence zero.
That sucks (for me, at least).

 

[Thrice]

One of my favorites, find:

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

Houseboat!

Would "beach house" work better?

 

[Office_Shredder]

Freezers are ice-o-morphic to water

 

[radou]

Freezers are ice-o-morphic to water

People are homomorphic to humans.

 

[Gib Z]

I don't get post 169 >.< In cabin?...

 

[AKG]

log cabin. Mathematicians use "log" to mean what non-mathematicians refer to as "ln". Because base 10 is mathematically less interesting than the natural base.

 

[Feldoh]

I don't get post 169 >.< In cabin?...

log(cabin)+C -- Think about it...

 

[Reshma]

log(cabin)+C -- Think about it...

This one's a repeat!
Cruise boat!

 

[mongoose]

someone probably already posted this, but:

Two mathematicians are in a bar. The first one says to the second that the average person knows very little about basic math. The second one disagrees, and claims that most people can cope with a reasonable amount of math. The first mathematician goes off to the washroom, and in his absence the second calls over the waitress. He tells her that in a few minutes, after his friend has returned, he will call her over and ask her a question; all she has to do is answer, "One third x cubed." She agrees, and goes off mumbling to herself. The first guy returns and the second proposes a bet to prove his point. He says he will ask the blonde waitress an integral, and the first laughingly agrees. The second man calls over the waitress and asks, "What is the integral of x squared?" The waitress says, "One third x cubed." Then, while walking away, she turns back and says, "Plus a constant!"

from wikipedia...funyy stuff

 

[mongoose]

Wow, nice apmcavoy!

hey man...that's a killer quote

hahaha

 

[strings235]

Warning: The may contain suggestive info, just a bit though XD

A slutty girl walks up to a mathematician and says (suggestively) "Do you know what 69 is?" He says "Well duh, any idiot would its product 3 and 13"
The girl reacts, "..." and he says, "Oh I'm sorry, how strange of me--I forgot to mention they're primes with spacing of 10...haha." You figure what goes on from there. ahaha...not that funny, but i was getting at the "bad" in the bad jokes.

 

[mongoose]

Warning: The may contain suggestive info, just a bit though XD

A slutty girl walks up to a mathematician and says (suggestively) "Do you know what 69 is?" He says "Well duh, any idiot would its product 3 and 13"
The girl reacts, "..." and he says, "Oh I'm sorry, how strange of me--I forgot to mention they're primes with spacing of 10...haha." You figure what goes on from there.


ahaha...not that funny, but i was getting at the "bad" in the bad jokes.

i don't get it

!

 

[ZioX]

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/FrivolousTheoremofArithmetic.html

 

[ZioX]

2+2=5 for very large 2's.

 

[sam1]

A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are at a conference, and are asked to determine the volume of a red ball.

The mathematician carefully measures the ball's diamater and calculates the volume from there.

The physicist fulls a beaker with water, and submerges the ball and records the difference in water level.

The engineer records the ball model type and serial number and looks it up in his red ball handbook.

 

[itsjustme]

Mathematical proof that women are evil

First we know that women are the product of time and money

Women = Time * Money

Then we know that time is money

Women = Money * Money

And that money is the root of all evil

Women = Sqrt(Evil) * Sqrt(Evil)

Women = Evil

 

[CompuChip]

2+2=5 for very large 2's.

As in, for any \epsilon &gt; 0 there exists \delta &gt; 0 such that for \left| 2 - \frac12 \right| &lt; \delta,
2 + 2 = 5

I like the ball gag[/size]

 

[CoCoA]

"Did you hear about the constipated mathmatician?"

"He had to work it out with a pencil!"
tee hee

That's supposed to be - he worked it out with a slide rule.

That joke just doesn't have the same effect since slide rules are gone. You need the word "slide" in there.

 

[olliemath]

An engineer a physicist and a mathematician are being tested on their approaches to problem solving by some psychologists. Each is left alone in a room with cans of food and no tin opener..

Several days later the psychologists return. The engineer has managed to open some of the cans by bashing them with a rock, he sits eating hapily. The physicist has obtained large amounts of funding and set up a complex system of high powered tin-opening lasers, but has now become too distracted to eat any of the food. When the psychologists visit the mathematician (geometer/topologist) there are pages and pages of calculations and diagrams, but he has disapeared and there are banging noises and groans coming from inside one of the tins. Concerned they prise it open and the mathematician pops out - "Sorry about that, I got a sign wrong!" he exclaims.

 

[Runner43]

His chances have not changed as no new information (that would change the statics) was really added by the guards revelation.

One thing I do find weird about this problem is how two people whom have never meet can both be found guilty of the same murder. That's some pretty whacky justice system.

No.
The chance of survival of the statistician is 0/3.

The fact that the guard points out to one of the OTHER two prisoners means that only one of them guilty. This implies that the statistician is the other to die. Poor guy...

c'mon...let's think outside of 'physics and mathematics', look at it from a psychological perspective ;)
-Liberal arts student

 

[M Grandin]

What's the square root of 69?

8-something.

I also didn't get that joke - but thought it perhaps was meant "square root of 79" instead.

The answer "8-something" then had been fun in an other sense (if you calculate that root...)

 

[Reshma]

I also didn't get that joke - but thought it perhaps was meant "square root of 79" instead.

The answer "8-something" then had been fun in an other sense (if you calculate that root...)

That's funny!

 

[Mensanator]

I didn't read through all 11 pages so I hope no one said these.

There are 3 types of mathematicians in the world...those who can count, and those who can't.


My quantum mechanics professor a few years ago said this one.

Q:Why doesn't Heisenberg live in the suburbs?

A: Because he doesn't like to commute.

One day Heisenberg got pulled over for speeding.

Cop: Do you know how fast you were going?

Heisenberg: No, but I know where I am.

 

[tauon]

3 friends: a chemist, an engineer and a mathematician are at the seaside in the mathematician's mountain log cabin. after much drinking and partying the mathematician decides to go to bed upstairs in his room. 2 minutes later, disturbed by the smell of fire the chemist and engineer hurriedly go upstairs as well and notice a fire in the hallway. the chemist immediately starts thinking of how to make a concoction that can extinguish the fire while the engineer after looking around notices a bucket of water and uses it to kill the fire. in the morning they ask the mathematician why he didn't do anything about the fire, to which he replied:

"I noticed fire, and a bucket of water nearby: a solution obviously existed."

 

[Borek]

As my math professor used to say back in eighties, you can always draw a straight line through three points. It just have to be sufficiently thick.

 

[Borek]

Why does

\frac {16} {64} = \frac 1 4

?

Spoiler

Because six cancels out.

 

[Hurkyl]

You've obviously never seen

\frac{\sin x}{n} = 6​

 

[LebLlama]

A mathematician, a physicist, and a llama microbiologist are in a room together with a hot girl. The scientists all say that they'll be the one who gets the girl.

The mathematician walks up to her and does a complex math problem to impress her.

The physicist smirks and says he can top that. He walks to her, sets up a conductor AND does a complex math problem to impress her.

The microbiologist walks up to her, smacks her *** and says "Lets go dancing baby girl" and the girl leaves with the microbiologist.

 

[Mensanator]

Not exactly a Math joke, but still good.

A physicist, chemist, electrcian and Bill Gates were riding along in a car when it suddenly stopped.

The phystcist says: "Engine must have thrown a rod."

The chemist says: "We would have felt that. Probably not getting gas."

The electrician says: "But we would have noticed it sputtering to a halt. The electrical systen probably failed."

Bill Gates says: "Why don't we get out of the car and get back in again."

 

[HallsofIvy]

Not exactly a Math joke, but still good.

A physicist, chemist, electrcian and Bill Gates were riding along in a car when it suddenly stopped.

The phystcist says: "Engine must have thrown a rod."

The chemist says: "We would have felt that. Probably not getting gas."

The electrician says: "But we would have noticed it sputtering to a halt. The electrical systen probably failed."

Bill Gates says: "Why don't we get out of the car and get back in again."

No, no, no! Bill gates says "Why don't we try closing all the windows, then opening them again"!

 

[l'Hôpital]

Not really a math joke, but a true funny story:

At the question period after a Dirac lecture at the University of Toronto, somebody in the audience remarked: "Professor Dirac, I do not understand how you derived the formula on the top left side of the blackboard."
"This is not a question," snapped Dirac, "it is a statement! Next question, please."

 

[Borek]

Our physics lecturer used to say "...according to what I have already erased..."

 

[HallsofIvy]

I have always loved "obvious to the most casual observer" to mean "I have no idea how to derive this"!

There is the old story of the professor who said "No, it is obvious that", hesitated, said "Now why is that obvious?", sat down at his desk, scribbled furiously for 20 minutes, then jumped up and said "Yes, it is obvious!"