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And behold, the Ark cometh to rest on Mount Ararat. And Noah telleth all the animals to go forth and multiply, but, lo! a pair of serpents cometh before Noah and saith that they findeth it impossible to multiply, for they are adders. Therefore Noah saith unto them, Verily, this is a big problem; I wouldst that thou shouldst come back when I completeth dealing with the other animals.
And it cameth to pass that when the adders returneth, behold! there wriggleth 10 baby adders behind them. And Noah was exceeding amazed. How didst thou do this thing? saith Noah unto the adders. And the adders answereth and saith unto Noah, Behold, we did it by logs.
(idea stolen from some NCTM math jokes publication. The thou-ing and lo-ing done by Gavin Hitchcock)Weiner, a great mathematician of this century, was very absent minded. The following story is told about him: When he and his family were moving house, his wife was so certain that he would forget that they had moved and where they had moved to that she wrote down the new address on a piece of paper, and gave it to him. Naturally, in the course of the day, an insight occurred to him. He reached in his pocket, found a piece of paper on which he furiously scribbled some notes, thought it over, decided there was a fallacy in his idea, and threw the piece of paper away.
At the end of the day he went home --- to his old address. When he got there he realized that they had moved, that he had no idea where they had moved to, and that the piece of paper with the address was long gone. Fortunately inspiration struck. There was a young girl on the street and he conceived the idea of asking her where he had moved to, saying, "Excuse me, perhaps you know me. I'm Norbert Weiner and we've just moved. Would you know where we've moved to?" To which the young girl replied, "Yes daddy, mommy thought you would forget."
(Regrettably, this story isn't completely true. Weiner's daughter said some twenty-plus years later that while the story was almost true, Norbert never actually forgot his own kids. What a shame - another beautiful legend spoiled by reality!)
A group of people were asked the following question. ``Say there are 2 people tied to a railway track, and a train is fast approaching. You have time to save just one of them. Which one would you save?''
The politician replied ``After arranging for a television crew to be present, and preferably making sure there was a press conference afterwards, I would rescue the one with the louder screams.''
The accountant replied ``I would rescue the one who offered to pay me most.''
The journalist replied ``I would ask the train driver to delay the collision till I could get a camera.''
The lawyer replied ``I would jump into the train and offer my services to the driver, who will almost certainly be sued by relatives of the two. ''
The physicist replied ``I would derail the train, as your question did not place any limitations on the safety of those in the train.''
The statistician replied ``I would toss a coin to pick one of them. Then I would toss the coin another hundred times to make sure that that was not a statistical fluke. Then I'd rescue the one selected.''
The Mathematician replied ``I would make two rescues, each saving half a person. But since persons come in whole numbers, in the mathematics of persons 1/2 is always rounded to 1, so each rescue saves a person. There are two rescues, so 2 people are saved.''
Click here for jokes in the next issue.