If Jack Handey Were a Math Guy

In our old neighborhood, we had the Heidelberg Bakery, which we loved for cupcakes, Bavarian pretzels, and challah. But I really wish it were named the Heisenberg Bakery instead, so that one of the employees could have said to me:

Sorry, I can tell you the status of your order, or I can tell you the location of your order — but not both!

I went to a geometry lecture last night on circles that was fascinating. But it lasted two hours longer than expected, because the speaker kept going off on a tangent.

Math is everywhere, even English class, where there are add‑verbs, add‑jectives, and conjunctions.

But math really is in English class; you can use proportions to find the past tense of flew:

Sure, they say that the moon is made of cheese, but I prefer to think that it’s made of crust and filling. Then it’d be π in the sky!

To get from point A to point B, a mathematician takes a rhom‑bus.

Math for the Office:
1/2 hour of productivity + 7 1/2 hours on the internet = 1 good day at work!

The Math of Diets:
2 cheeseburgers + 46 fries + 1 diet soda = 1 totally healthy meal!

Square box. Round pizza. Triangular slices. WTF?

Today’s Special: Buy one cheeseburger for the price of two, and receive a second cheeseburger absolutely free!

I’m worried about that man over there drawing on graph paper. I think he’s plotting something.

Why is 6 afraid of 7?
Because math is terrifying.

If I had a dozen strips of bacon, and you took four of them, what would you have?
That’s right. You’d have a black eye.

Werner, A Man Loved by Airlines

Know what this is?

BEHIHIHIHIHIHIRG

(Answer at bottom of post.)

I am not certain that the preceding or following jokes are funny. I am certain, however, that today is Werner Heisenberg‘s birthday. If you’re not familiar with his work, you might want to read about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle before continuing. Not that it’ll make the following jokes any funnier — in fact, if you require an explanation of the content prior to reading these jokes, well, that will almost surely guarantee that you will not find them funny — but perhaps you’ll feel a little smarter. (A more technical description of the principle can be found here.)

Why was Heisenberg’s wife unsatisfied?

When he had the time, he didn’t have the energy; and when he had the position, he didn’t have the momentum.

Heisenberg was out for a drive when a traffic cop stopped him. The cop says, “Do you know how fast you were going?”

Heisenberg replies, “No, but I know where I am.”

Werner Heisenberg, Kurt Gödel and Noam Chomsky walk into a bar.

Heisenberg looks around the bar and says, “Because there are three of us and because this is a bar, it must be a joke. But the question remains, is it funny or not?”

Gödel thinks for a moment and says, “Well, because we’re inside the joke, we can’t tell whether it’s funny or not. We’d have to be outside looking in.”

Chomsky looks at both of them and says, “Of course, it’s funny. You’re just telling it wrong.”

Hmm… maybe I should have shared some information about Gödel and Chomsky, too.

Riddle Answer: Heisenberg (HI’s in BERG)

Random Thoughts

The following was sent to me by my friend Pat Flynn, and it may enter my email signature soon.

The derivative of my enthusiasm for mathematics is positive for all values of the independent variable.

And here are some one-liners that don’t warrant their own posts, but they’re just too good not to share…

Heisenberg might have slept here.

Old mathematicians never die; they just lose some of their functions.

Whenever four mathematicians get together, you’ll likely find a fifth.

“Take a positive integer n. No, wait, n is too large; take a positive integer k.”