Just Curious

In-jokes

Folks, here are some really good in-jokes among math nerds.

My friend Clara is attending a psychology class in which a lot of field studies have to be done. A questionnaire they handed out last week was about a person's emotional assessment of oneself. When Clara mentioned to Irina, another friend, that included among those categories on the test is "completeness," the first thing that pops up in Irina's mind was:

Does every Cauchy sequences they have converge?

Another joke was about Swiss mathematician and physicist Leonhard Euler, who was regarded by many as the greatest mathematician of all time (tied with Archimides and Gauss I believe) as well as a deeply religious person. When he was in Berlin, he joined the philosophical circle of Voltaire and was constantly ridiculed by the French philosopher and his company for his religiosity. It took a while before he finally got his chance of vengeance.

One day agnostic Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot was informed that someone got a mathematical proof of the existence of God. He requested to hear it. Euler, knowing that Diderot's knowledge in mathematics and algebra in particular is close to nonexistant, stepped up and taunted him, in front of Catherine the Great and a large audience,

"Sir, (a + b^n)/n=x ,hence God exists; reply!"

Poor Denis did not understand a word Professor Euler just said, and left the Palace a defeated philosopher. Little did he realize that Euler was messing around with him

posted by James Chang @ 1:45 PM