Talk:Mathematical joke

"Vandalism"?
Perfectly apt examples are hardly that. 72.37.249.60 (talk) 20:37, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Unsourced content
It appears there was some confusion about my recent removal of unsourced content. The article has been tagged for more than three years as needing citations, but no one has bothered to include any. I am challenging the verifiability of the uncited material I've removed. I have additional concerns about inaccuracies, undue weight and original research.

I'm assuming that the editor who reverted the pruning of the page simply saw that a lot of material was missing and assumed a vandal was at work. Of course, a more careful review of the edit history will reveal that the deletions were not wholesale, but narrowly targeted at sources that were not reliable, material that was not sourced at all, and additional information that did not meet the standards set by the Manual of Style.

I'll restore my changes, and if there are any more concerns, I hope we can address them here. — Bdb484 (talk) 19:16, 5 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Much of what you are removing is validly sourced. There have already been two attempts to delete this page Articles for deletion/Mathematical joke, Articles for deletion/Mathematical joke (2nd nomination) and both were dismissed as not having a snowball's chance in Hades. By removing the entire article (and leaving just a stub) you are attempting to do basically the same thing which was already twice refused... namely deleting pretty much the entire page because you dislike the subject itself.
 * If there are specific bits of mathematics which you believe to be incorrect, identify them individually and explain why they need to be corrected or sourced differently. Section blanking is not constructive. 2001:5C0:1000:A:0:0:0:1659 (talk) 22:15, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I recognize that there are sources for much of the material, but most of them are not reliable sources. I think I may have misjudged the reliability of mathscareers.org.uk, but most of the rest -- hudsonvalleygeologist.blogspot.com, for instance -- don't really get the job done.
 * Also, I'd encourage you to refrain from guessing at my motives, as you've proven yourself monstrously incompetent. I'll admit that I prefer grammar humor, but I like math jokes pretty well, also. What I don't like is articles that aren't up to WP standards. I don't have any problem with this article's existence, nor do I want to see it deleted. I just want to see it fully sourced.
 * You should also refrain from such accusations to remain in compliance with AGF. After all, you don't see me tossing out accusations of socking, which circumstantial evidence would certainly support.
 * So if there's some reason why you think that this material is an exception to the policy on verifiability, you should probably share it. Otherwise, the material should remain tucked away in the edit history until someone decides to source it. — Bdb484 (talk) 00:08, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I am afraid you have too high expectation for WP standards, e.g., in terms of WP:RS. For example I see nothing wrong with interview with a comedian published at mathscareers.org.uk, nor with the site itself. If you have issues with them, please explain. I understand that the word "careers" might rise a red flag, but not in context of the current article. Also, to suggest that "most of the rest" are best represented by a single ref to blogpost.com - sorry it is disingenuous. As far as I see, several people watch this page closely and keep it free from chaff. Most content here is well known and reasonably referenced. If you dispute some statements, please explain your specific grievances in the talk page item by item. Please keep in mind that massive deletions of ages-old non-obscure non-controversial material almost inevitably elicits a knee-jerk revert, and you are back to explaining yourself in detail - which you might as well have done from the very beginning, without generating heat in this talk page. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:50, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Variants of jokes
I have removed several variants of jokes from this page (e.g., the binary joke under base 3 instead of base 2). It could easily turn into a jokebook; items should only be included to demonstrate a specific concept; we need to be careful of over-example-ifying it. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 01:13, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

leave more ambiguity
it's not funny if you have to explain it — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.118.190.205 (talk) 21:39, 16 June 2014 (UTC)


 * This is encyclopaedia, it is meant to be informative, not funny. --CiaPan (talk) 21:46, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Limerick 'Integral z squared dz'
I'm surprised this limerick is absent in the article, I thought it is much better known than 'A dozen, a gross, and a score'...


 * Integral z–squared dz
 * From one to the cube root of three,
 * Times the cosine
 * Of three pi over nine
 * Equals log of the cube root of e.


 * $$\int_1^{\sqrt[3]3} z^2 dz \times \cos\frac{3\pi}9=\ln\sqrt[3]e$$

CiaPan (talk) 11:27, 2 June 2015 (UTC)


 * The origin of the limerick is unknown, but it is mentioned in Second Wave Intertextuality and the Hebrew Bible by Marianne Grohmann and Hyun Chul Paul Kim, in Resources for Biblical Study vol. 93, page 154. A link to Google books: https://books.google.com/books?id=LtqaDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=integral+zee+squared+dee+zee CiaPan (talk) 19:57, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Suggestion for a good short joke
I think you should incorporate the following 1-line joke in the article: "1=2 (for sufficiently large values of 1)" 84.111.8.170 (talk) 20:44, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * That's a nice one. Bob.v.R (talk) 10:37, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

I was (taught?) that "1=2 (for sufficiently accurate values of 1 and 2)"TPOBrien (talk) 20:37, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

One more
Is it cheating to truncate the Y-axis in a graph? --Atlasowa (talk) 07:00, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

42
I have removed the following addition to the section titled "pun-based jokes" and wonder what people think:
 * A numerical base pun was suspected to be behind the corrupted Ultimate Question (What do you get when you multiply six by nine?) to the Ultimate Answer (42), since $$42_{13} = 6*9$$. However, Douglas Adams noted that nobody writes jokes in base 13.

I removed it for two reasons: First, it says Adams didn't write it as a base-13 joke, so it doesn't seem to belong in that section (note, however, that the link in the related wikipedia article which supports this statement is dead - so there's no existing reference). More importantly, though, it's incomprehensible to somebody who isn't in on the Hitchhiker's Guide joke. Unless you already know what it's talking about, you can't figure it out - what the heck is a "corrupted Ultimate Question"? - which is bad for an encyclopedia. (Also, the wikilink is very non-transparent - it's not at all clear what you're going to get when you click on the link for "base 13", which is poor wikipedia style.) - DavidWBrooks (talk) 20:13, 30 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Do what you want, I guess. I'm not seasoned enough at Wikipedia editing to get the style right, include proper sources and explanations, etc. I think it's nice to have in this section because even if it's specifically not a numerical-base joke it is a funny prospect and seems to merit a place in a discussion of them, especially since it's not the typical sort of setup and is fresher than yet-another-10-types-of-people example. Most engineers don't really confuse Christmas and Halloween, either, and half the fun of the 13 is supposing that Adams was using bases as bizarrely as those supposed engineers. If we have to explain the joke, properly link and pothole the Question and Answer and Hitchhiker's Guide series, etc., then that's fine. Apologies for the initial edit's winky tone (some TVTropes style may have leaked in).

129.22.115.140 (talk) 20:22, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Yeah, tone and style in wikipedia can be wonky and odd, especially to newcomers. But articles aren't designed to be places for discussion that's merely fun and fresh - it has to be illustrative of the topic and clear to readers. I don't think that this item fits that description - although when the article itself is about jokes, this can be a touch distinction to maintain, I grant you.
 * By the way, I checked the reference that is linked via base 13 and it pointed to a dead page - so wikipedia has no reference that shows Adams ever said that he doesn't make base-13 jokes. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 10:46, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

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Let's remove the Imaginary and complex numbers section
In my opinion, the section about "Imaginary and complex numbers" doesn't belong. It's too much information about a not-very-common example of the type of joke - mis-applying a mathematical concept - that is covered elsewhere. It's also written like a math paper, starting out with definitions of terms. I'd like to remove it; any thoughts? - DavidWBrooks (talk) 14:47, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

"There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't." listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don&. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Polyamorph (talk) 09:28, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

A question both deep and profound
A question both deep and profound, Is whether a circle is round. In a paper by Erdős, Co-authored in Kurdish, A counter-example is found.

(I may know the person who wrote that; no WP article, but with a bit of research they might pass WP:GNG. I don't know of anything even close to WP:RS for the limerick.) Narky Blert (talk) 19:27, 13 March 2020 (UTC)


 * This article can't be - of course! - a list of all mathematical jokes. If we had a source, what would adding this to the article do for the reader? It doesn't seem to be a different type of limerick, just another example of it (albeit a good one!). - DavidWBrooks (talk) 19:58, 13 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Actually, there is a 'circle' in topology, which is not round – the Warsaw circle. Funny coincidence, there is a street in Warsaw's Old Town called 'Krzywe Koło', literally 'Crooked Circle' (pl:Ulica Krzywe Koło w Warszawie). --CiaPan (talk) 19:00, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

The first axiom of descriptive geometry
For any three points on a plane one can draw a line through all those points

...provided it's wide enough. --CiaPan (talk) 20:35, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Be rational. Get real.
Just wanted to point out that Commons has this version for the "What did $\pi$ say to $i$? Get real. What did $i$ say to π? Be rational." that is currently mentioned in the article. Daniel Mietchen (talk) 02:20, 26 March 2023 (UTC)