10. For simplicity,
let us assume that Earth is a torus... (L.Butler)
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11. My friend E. found a
postdoctoral position in Beer-Sheva, Israel. Someone else asked him:"E, I
heard you found a job somewhere in the Midwest!"."No", said E,
"I actually found it in the Middle East".
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12. Vladimir Retakh: We
continued the game with formulas in Gelfand’s kitchen in Moscow. Once a
government official phoned Gelfand. He complained that his thirteen-year-old
son hated mathematics and asked Gelfand for advice. I expected to hear a
cascade of Gelfand’s jokes, but he was dead serious. He asked the boy to
pick up the phone and said, “I will give you just three problems: multiply
one by
one, one by negative one, and negative one by negative one.” The teenager
gave the correct answer to the first two questions and then stopped.
“That’s great,” Gelfand said, “you already know two
thirds of all mathematics;
you just need to try a little bit to get the rest of it”.
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13. An equivalence
relation is the one which is reflexive, symmetric and transitive. For example,
the friendship is not an equivalence relation; it is not transitive. But it is also
not symmetric, and not even reflexive; not every person is his/her own
friend…
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14. A US senator
(apparently a fiscal conservative): the NSF is spending money on lie theory,
for God’s sake…
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15. Paul Erdȍs is
often quoted saying: “mathematicians are machines which convert coffee
into theorems”. Once, attending a conference in US, Erdȍs sips
coffee and sighs: “this is not going to produce even a
lemma…”
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16. The
primary reason Bourbaki stopped writing books was the realization that Lang was
a single person. (Faraad
Armwood)
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17. When you dip a
doughnut in a brandy it becomes a Kelin Bottle… because it looses its
orientation.
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18. Hilbert had a student
who one day presented him with a paper purpoting to prove the Riemann
Hypothesis. Hilbert studied the paper carefully and was impressed by depth of
the argument; but unfortunately he found an error in it which even he could not
eliminate. The following year the student died. Hilbert asked the grieving
parents if he might be permitted to make a funeral oration. While the student’s
relatives and friends were weeping beside the grave in the rain, Hilbert came
forward. He began by saying what a tragedy it was that such a gifted young man
had died before he had had an opportunity to show what he could accomplish.
But, he continued, in spite of the fact that this young man’s proof
contained an error, it was still possible that one day a proof of the famous
problem would be obtained along the lines which the deceased had indicated.
“In fact”, he continued with enthusiasm, standing there in the rain
by the dead student’s grave, “let us consider a function of a
complex variable…” (told
by Faraad Armwood)
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19. – What is the
middle name of Benoit B. Mandelbrot?
-- Benoit B.
Mandelbrot.
(Morgan O’Brien).
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20. -- What is the contour integral of Western Europe?
-- Zero, because all the poles are in Eastern Europe. (told by Jimmy Thorne)
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21. -- Can you make an
anagram of Banach Tarski?
-- Banach Tarski
Banach Tarski.
(Morgan O’Brien)
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