Saturday, December 20, 2008

Various math-related jokes (among other things)

What does Santa say?
"Null hypothesis, null hypothesis, null hypothesis!" (Ho, Ho, Ho!)
Credit goes to my friend from my statistics class. For all you non-math people (and even some math people), the Ho is pronounced 'H-null', and represents the null hypothesis for a statistics test.

Who made King Arthur's Round Table?
Sir Cumference

And now here's some random facts that I learned in my proof-writing class:
-Lewis Carroll (author of Alice in Wonderland) was really a mathematician. His books Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are filled with tons of mathematical logic (will find some examples sooner or later).
-The song "The 12 Days of Christmas" does not mean the person gets 12 or 78 gifts. No, this 'true love' gives 364 gifts. Who knew the song was about sequences? Someone had too much eggnog, as well as too much time and money on his or her hands...and apparently was a math geek on top of that.

More flair!

Friday, December 5, 2008

The randomness that is multivariable calculus

When learning about derivatives, eat cake.
When learning about double integrals, eat more cake.
When learning about triple integrals, eat ice cream.
Constructive vs. Destructive (SMASH Z FIRST!!!! Or not...)
When learning about flux, eat twinkies (leave the twinkie).
The vector field of gravity is EVIL.
The divergence of vector F (F being the vector field of gravity) centered where (x,y,z) is not equal to
(0,0,0) is 0. At the origin it is undefined.
The gradient of a vector determines the potential...if there's no potential, it's not gonna work out:

Guy to his date says, "It was fun, but this rotational vector field has no potential."


And this is what happens in a calc class...full of econ majors and only 5 math majors.