Math Jokes Category

L. organized the seminar in hydrodynamics in his University. Among the regular attendees there were two men in the uniform, obviously military engineers. They never discussed the problems they were working on. But one day they ask L. to help with a math. problem. They explained that the solution of a certain equation oscillated and asked how they should change the coefficients to make it monotonic. L. looked on the equation and said: "Make the wings longer!" Read more

A mathematician about his late colleague: " He made a lot of mistakes, but he made them in a good direction. I tried to copy this, but I found out that it is very difficult to make good mistakes. " Read more

This story is attributed to Professor Lev Loytiansky, the stage is in Soviet Union in thirties or forties. Read more

N. had the habit of simply writing answers to homework assignments on the board (the method of solution being, of course, obvious) when he was asked how to solve problems. One time one of his students tried to get more helpful information by asking if there was another way to solve the problem. N. looked blank for a moment, thought, and then answered, "Yes". Read more

A famous mathematician was to give a keynote speech at a conference. Asked for an advance summary, he said he would present a proof of Fermat`s Last Theorem -- but they should keep it under their hats. When he arrived, though, he spoke on a much more prosaic topic. Afterwards the conference organizers asked why he said he`d talk about the theorem and then didn`t. He replied this was his standard practice, just in case he was killed on the way to the conference. Read more

In his lecture, ** formulated a theorem and said: "The proof is obvious". Then he thought for a minute, left the lecture room, returned after 15 minutes and happily concluded: "Indeed, it is obvious!" Read more

The following problem can be solved either the easy way or the hard way. Read more

Two trains 200 miles apart are moving toward each other; each one is going at a speed of 50 miles per hour. A fly starting on the front of one of them flies back and forth between them at a rate of 75 miles per hour. It does this until the trains collide and crush the fly to death. What is the total distance the fly has flown? Read more

The fly actually hits each train an infinite number of times before it gets crushed, and one could solve the problem the hard way with pencil and paper by summing an infinite series of distances. The easy way is as follows: Since the trains are 200 miles apart and each train is going 50 miles an hour, it takes 2 hours for the trains to collide. Therefore the fly was flying for two hours. Since the fly was flying at a rate of 75 miles per hour, the fly must have flown 150 miles. That`s all there is to it. Read more

When this problem was posed to John von Neumann, he immediately replied, "150 miles." "It is very strange," said the poser, "but nearly everyone tries to sum the infinite series." "What do you mean, strange?" asked Von Neumann. "That`s how I did it!" Read more