Math Jokes

What’s purple and commutes? An abelian grape. What’s purple, commutes and is worshipped by a limited number of people? A finitely generated abelian grape. What is purple and all of its offspring have been committed to institutions? A simple grape; it has no normal subgrapes. What’s purple, round and doesn’t get much for Christmas? A finitely presented grape. What nutritious and commutes? An abelian soup. What’s hot, chunky and acts on a polygon? Dihedral soup. What’s sour, yellow and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice? Zorn’s Lemon. What is brown, furry, runs to the sea, and is equivalent to the Axiom of Choice? Zorn’s Lemming. What is green and homeomorphic to the open unit interval? The real lime. What’s yellow, linear, normed and complete? A Banananach space. What do you call a young Eigensheep? A lamb, duh! What’s the value of a contour integral around Western Europe? Zero, because all the Poles are in Eastern Europe. ADDENDUM: Actually, there ARE some Poles in Western Europe, but they are removable! Why did the mathematician name his dog “Cauchy”? Because he left a residue at every pole. What is a topologist? Someone who cannot distinguish between a doughnut and a coffee cup. Why didn’t Newton discover group theory? Because he wasn’t Abel.

What do you get if you crossed an elephant and a banana? |elephant| |banana| sin (theta) What do you get if you crossed a mosquito with a mountain climber? Nothing; you can’t cross a vector with a scalar. What do you get if you crossed a mountain goat with a mountain climber? Nothing; you can’t cross two scalars. What is a compact city? It’s a city that can be guarded by finitely many nearsighted policemen. What’s a dilemma? A lemma that produces two results. What’s a polar bear? A rectangular bear after a coordinate transform. What goes “Pieces of seven! Pieces of seven!” A parroty error. Why can’t you grow wheat in Z/6Z? It’s not a field. What’s big, grey, and proves the uncountability of the reals? Cantor’s diagonal elephant. What is gray and huge and has integer coefficients? An elephantine equation. What is very old, used by farmers, and obeys the fundamental theorem of arithmetic? An antique tractorization domain. What is hallucinogenic and exists for every group with order divisible by pk? A psilocybin p-subgroup. What is often used by Canadians to help solve certain differential equations? The Lacrosse Transform. What is clear and used by trendy sophisticated engineers to solve other differential equations? The Perrier Transform. Who knows everything there is to know about vector analysis? The Oracle of del phi!

Why can fish from the United States enter Canadian waters without a passport? This is permitted by the Law of Aquatic reciprocity! Why are topologists especially prone to malaria? This disease comes from the Tietze fly! Why do truncated Maclaurin series fit the original function so well? Because they are “Taylor” made. What is locally like a ring and very evil? A devilish scheme. What is a proof? One half a percent of alcohol. What is black and white ivory and fills space? A piano curve. What’s polite and works for the phone company? A deferential operator. What does a topologist call a virgin? Simply connected.