Math stand-up act
(This is the act that I performed at the first annual IU math department talent show last night. The preceding act was a bass/recorder duet.)
Wow, there are some great acts here. In particular, I think the basis we just heard was great. His music spanned our three-space quite nicely. Anyway, I was going to bring some predatory birds here, but then I realized it wasn’t a talon show.
Okay, I’d like to make a request of you before I start my act. Please laugh very loudly at everything I say, because nobody might actually find it funny.
So, math comedy. When I told my friends I was going to do a math stand-up act, one of them replied, “Chuck Norris knows the tangent of pi over two!” Well…okay. I’m not sure how to respond to that.
Math comedy is certainly a niche audience, though. Even among mathematicians. If you ask a statistician if they’ve heard a joke before, they say “Probably.”
Anyway, there are a lot of oldies-but-goodies. There’s the joke about the mathematician who gives a talk about 13-dimensional space. Afterwards, an engineer comes up to him and says, “Wow, how could you possibly visualize 13-dimensional space?” The mathematician responds simply, “That’s easy, I just visualize n-dimensional space, and set n equal to 13.”
Of course, many sub-disciplines come with their own occupational hazards. They say topologists can’t tell the difference between a doughnut and a coffee mug, them being homeomorphic and all. I’m not sure if that’s true; I’ll ask Kent after the show.
And then physicists get their own brand of flak from mathematicians. Physicists, you see, use a special brand of mathematics. The really fuzzy type…that’s usually wrong, but somehow comes up with the right answers all the time. I think one thing in particular illustrates physicist math. Those of you who know some physics may know that electric and magnetic waves propagate as orthogonal sinusoidal waves. The direction in which they are pointing, the vector representing the energy flux of the wave, that’s called the Poynting vector. I don’t know about you, but I never make distinctions about which of my vectors are pointing. They all are!
Anyway, the other day I was going to a geometry conference, and I was speaking on constructible diagrams. I was flying out of the airport, but I was stopped at security because of my straightedge and compass. They found my weapons of math construction. I ended up missing my plane. But it’s okay; luckily I had three points in my pocket, so I defined my own plane and got there on time.
You know, we mathematicians are always trying to prove to everyone that there’s math everywhere. In particular, there’s a lot of math in the Bible; did you know that? For example, a lost story from the gospels. One day, Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like x squared plus 3x plus 5!” Somebody went up to Matthew and asked him, “What is Jesus talking about?” “Don’t worry,” responded Matthew, “that’s just another one of his parabolas.”
Then there’s also the story in Genesis with Noah’s Ark. After the ark landed, Noah told all the animals to go forth and repopulate the world. Two snakes stayed behind, and told him, “We can’t do that until you build us a wooden desk.” So, whatever, he built it, and lo and behold, they started to reproduce. He asked them what the problem was, and they said, “Well, we’re adders. We need log tables to multiply.”
The other day I was proving a theorem. It was a long theorem, with a lot of significant intermediate stages. I got to one of those stages, and I said to myself, “Do I have to finish? Lemma stop here.”
Medicine has made great strides recently. When right triangles get old, they sometimes start to sag, their right angle turns into 89 degrees, 88 degrees… Anyway, they made this injection, you can just apply it to the triangle, and the angle will snap back up to a right angle. It’s called Pythagorean serum.
The other day I was at the concession stand. I wanted a medium order of Fibonachos, and my friend wanted a small order. But then I realized that a small plus a medium cost the same as a large.
I usually eat more healthily. I found a grape that could commute, it’s called an abelian grape.
I thought up a great anagram for Banach-Tarski. Ready? It’s… “Banach-Tarski Banach-Tarski.”
Some people have wondered why Newton didn’t contribute to group theory. It’s because he wasn’t Abel.
Have you heard? A former vice president recently released some rap tapes to teach computer science. It’s called “Al Gore Rhythms.”
Even mermaids like math. They wear algae bras.
Okay, just one more and I’ll leave you guys alone. So, as you know, lately, the military has been having issues with how its officers are perceived. Some kernels have expressed concern at their rather zero-dimensional images.