http://ion.le.ac.uk/~mar5/mar5.html

I forget where from :-(.....ENJOY!

97.3% of all statistics are made up.
There was an Indian Chief, and he had three squaws, and kept them in three teepees. When he would come home late from hunting, he would not know which teepee contained which squaw, being dark and all. He went hunting one day, and killed a hippopotamus, a bear, and a buffalo. He put the a hide from each animal into a different teepee, so that when he came home late, he could feel inside the teepee and he would know which squaw was inside. Well after about a year, all three squaws had children. The squaw on the bear had a baby boy, the squaw on the buffalo hide had a baby girl. But the squaw on the hippopotamus had a girl and a boy. So what is the moral of the story?

The squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the sum of the squaws on the other two hides.

Did you hear the one about the statistician? Probably....
There was once a very smart horse. Anything that was shown it, it mastered easily, until one day, its teachers tried to teach it about rectanguar coordinates and it couldn't understand them. All the horse's aquaintences and friends tried to figure out what was the matter and couldn't. Then a new guy (what the heck, a computer engineer) looked at the problem and said,

"Of course he can't do it. Why, you're putting Descartes before the horse!"

"What do you get when you cross an elephant with a banana?

Elephant banana sine theta in a direction mutually perpendicular to the two as determined by the right hand rule."

TOP TEN EXCUSES FOR NOT DOING THE MATH HOMEWORK

  1. I accidentally divided by zero and my paper burst into flames.
  2. Isaac Newton's birthday.
  3. I could only get arbitrarily close to my textbook. I couldn't actually reach it.
  4. I have the proof, but there isn't room to write it in this margin.
  5. I was watching the World Series and got tied up trying to prove that it converged.
  6. I have a solar powered calculator and it was cloudy.
  7. I locked the paper in my trunk but a four-dimensional dog got in and ate it.
  8. I couldn't figure out whether i am the square of negative one or i is the square root of negative one.
  9. I took time out to snack a doughnut and a cup of coffee. I spent the rest of the night trying to figure which one to dunk.
  10. I could have sworn I put the homework inside a Klein bottle, but this morning I couldn't find it.
A Physicist and a mathematician setting in a faculty lounge. Suddenly, the coffee machine catches on fire. The physicist grabs a bucket and leap towards the sink, filled the bucket with water and puts out the fire. Second day, the same two sit in the same lounge. Again, the coffee machine catches on fire. This time, the mathematician stands up, got a bucket, hand the bucket to the physicist, thus reduce the problem to a previousely solved one. 
An engineer, a mathematician, and a physicist are staying in three adjoining cabins at a decrepit old motel.
First the engineer's coffee maker catches fire on the bathroom vanity. He smells the smoke, wakes up, unplugs it, throws it out the window, and goes back to sleep.
Later that night the physicist smells smoke too. He wakes up and sees that a cigarette butt has set the trash can on fire. He says to himself, "Hmm. How does one put out a fire? One can reduce the temperature of the fuel below the flash point, isolate the burning material from oxygen, or both. This could be accomplished by applying water." So he picks up the trash can, puts it in the shower stall, turns on the water, and, when the fire is out, goes back to sleep.
The mathematician, of course, has been watching all this out the window. So later, when he finds that his pipe ashes have set the bedsheet on fire, he is not in the least taken aback. He immediately sees that the problem reduces to one that has already been solved and goes back to sleep. 
So a mathematician, an engineer, and a physicist are out hunting together. They spy a *deer in the woods.
The physicist calculates the velocity of the deer and the effect of gravity on the bullet, aims his rifle and fires. Alas, he misses; the bullet passes three feet behind the deer. The deer bolts some yards, but comes to a halt, still within sight of the trio. "Shame you missed," comments the engineer, "but of course with an ordinary gun, one would expect that." He then levels his special deer-hunting gun, which he rigged together from an ordinary rifle, a sextant, a compass, a barometer, and a bunch of flashing lights which don't do anything but impress onlookers, and fires. Alas, his bullet passes three feet in front of the deer, who by this time wises up and vanishes for good. "Well," says the physicist, "your contraption didn't get it either." "What do you mean?" pipes up the mathematician. "Between the two of you, that was a perfect shot!"

**** How they knew it was a deer:****
The physicist observed that it behaved in a deer-like manner, so it must be a deer.
The mathematician asked the physicist what it was, thereby reducing it to a previously solved problem.
The engineer was in the woods to hunt deer, therefore it was a deer. 

A mathematician and a physicist were asked the following question:

Suppose you walked by a burning house and saw a hydrant and a hose not connected to the hydrant. What would you do?

P: I would attach the hose to the hydrant, turn on the water, and put out the fire.

M: I would attach the hose to the hydrant, turn on the water, and put out the fire.

Then they were asked this question:

Suppose you walked by a house and saw a hose connected to a hydrant. What would you do?

P: I would keep walking, as there is no problem to solve.

M: I would disconnect the hose from the hydrant and set the house on fire, reducing the problem to a previously solved form. 

A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer are given an identical problem: Prove that all odd numbers greater than 2 are prime numbers. They proceed:

Mathematician: 3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime, 9 is not a prime - counterexample - claim is false.

Physicist: 3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is a prime, ...

Engineer: 3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, 7 is a prime, 9 is a prime, 11 is a prime, ... 

A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were travelling through Scotland when they saw a black sheep through the window of the train.

"Aha," says the engineer, "I see that Scottish sheep are black."

"Hmm," says the physicist, "You mean that some Scottish sheep are black."

"No," says the mathematician, "All we know is that there is at least one sheep in Scotland, and that at least one side of that one sheep is black!" 

A Mathemetician (M) and an Engineer (E) attend a lecture by a Physicist. The topic concerns Kulza-Klein theories involving physical processes that occur in spaces with dimensions of 9, 12 and even higher. The M is sitting, clearly enjoying the lecture, while the E is frowning and looking generally confused and puzzled. By the end the E has a terrible headache. At the end, the M comments about the wonderful lecture.

E says "How do you understand this stuff?"
M: "I just visualize the process"
E: "How can you POSSIBLY visualize somrthing that occurs in 9-dimensional space?"
M: "Easy, first visualize it in N-dimensional space, then let N go to 9" 

There were once three acedimians, an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician visiting a small town for a conference. They found themselves forced to share a room in one of the most dirty, dingy, and really low quality hotels that they had ever seen. The room that the had was on the third floor, and the nearest working bathroom was on the fourth.

Late that night, the engineer awoke, and decided to avail himself of the lavatory facilities. Going up the stairs, he smelled smoke, and indeed, at the end of the hall he saw a fire. Finding a hose on the wall, he turned it on, ran down the hall, and extinguished the fire. He then visited the bathroom, and returned to bed.

An hour later, the physicist awoke, and felt the call of nature. As he went upstairs, he smelled smoke, and found that there was a fire. Finding the hose, he whipped out his calculator, figured out the amount of water needed to extinguish a fire of that size, calculated the flow rate of the hose, turned it on for exactly 15.24 minutes, and extinguished the fire. He then used the bathroom, and returned to bed.

Later still, the mathematician awoke and decided that he needed to use the bathroom. Going upstairs, he too found the olbligatory smoke and fire. Looking around in a panic, he found the fire hose. He then said, "Aha! A solution exists!" And after using the bathroom, he returned to bed. 

A physicist and mathematician are given a task: to boil some water in a tea pot. They are both given empty tea pot. So they both fill it up with water and then put it on a stove and boil it.

Now the problem becomes more complicated: The tea pot filled with water is standing on the stove. The task is the same.

PHYSICIST: turns on a fire and heats the water. MATHEMATICIAN: Pours out the water and the problem is reduced to the previous one. 

(a little stupid)
The guy gets on a bus and starts threatenning everybody: "I'll integrate you! I'll differentiate you!!!" So everybody gets scared and runs away. Only one person stays. The guy comes up to him and says:"Aren't you scared, I'll integrate you, I'll differentiate you!!!" And the other guy says; "No, I am not scared, I am e^x" 
( 1
) ----- = log cabin
. cabin
^
Integral sign...
Why did the cat fall off the roof? Because he lost his mu. (mew=sound cats make, mu=coeff of friction) 
Q: What do you call a teapot of boiling water on top of mount everest? A: A HIGH-POT-IN-USE Q: What do you call a broken record? A: A Decca-gone 
What follows is a "quiz" a student of mine once showed me (which she'd gotten from a previous teacher, etc...) It's multiple choice, and if you sort this letter (with upper and lower case disjoint, ie on an ASCII machine) questions and answers will come out next to each other. Enjoy...

S. What the acorn said when he grew up
N. bisects
u. A dead parrot
g. center
F. What you should do when it rains
R. hypotenuse
m. A guy who has been to the beach
H. coincide
h. The set of cards is missing
y. polygon
A. The boy has a speech defect
t. secant
K. How they schedule gym class
p. tangent
b. What he did when his mother-in-law wanted to go home
D. ellipse
O. The tall kettle boiling on the stove
W. geometry
r. Why the girl doesn't run a 4-minute mile
j. decagon

A mathematician named Paul Has a hexahedronical ball And the square of it's weight Times his pecker plus eight Is his phone number, give him a call! 
When considering the behaviour of a howitzer: A mathematician will be able to calculate where the shell will land

A physicist will be able to explain how the shell gets there

An engineer will stand there and try to catch it 

A group of Polish tourists is flying on a small airplane through the Grand Canyon on a sightseeing tour. The tour guide anounces: "On the right of the airplane, you can see the famous Bright Angle Falls." The tourists leap out of their seats and crowd to the windows on the right side. This causes a dynamic imbalance, and the plane violently rolls to the side and crashes into the canyon wall. All aboard are lost. The moral to this episode is: always keep your poles off the right side of the plane.

Caveat: While this joke mentions Polish people, it is not, in my opinion, in the catagory of the infamous Polish jokes. I hope no one is offended but only humored.

Mrs. Johnson the elementary school math teacher was having children do problems on the blackboard that day.

``Who would like to do the first problem, addition?''

No one raised their hand. She called on Tommy, and with some help he finally got it right.

``Who would like to do the second problem, subtraction?''

Students hid their faces. She called on Mark, who got the problem but there was some suspicion his girlfriend Lisa whispered it to him.

``Who would like to do the third problem, division?''

Now a low collective groan could be heard as everyone looked at nothing in particular. The teacher called on Suzy, who got it right (she has been known to hold back sometimes in front of her friends).

``Who would like to do the last problem, multiplication?''

Tim's hand shot up, surprising everyone in the room. Mrs. Johnson finally gained her composure in the stunned silence. ``Why the enthusiasm, Tim?''

``God said to go fourth and multiply!'' 

A mathematician and a physicist agree to a psychological experiment. The mathematician is put in a chair in a large empty room and a beautiful naked woman is placed on a bed at the other end of the room. The psychologist explains, "You are to remain in your chair. Every five minutes, I will move your chair to a position halfway between its current location and the woman on the bed." The mathematician looks at the psychologist in disgust. "What? I'm not going to go through this. You know I'll never reach the bed!" And he gets up and storms out. The psychologist makes a note on his clipboard and ushers the physicist in. He explains the situation, and the physicist's eyes light up and he starts drooling. The psychologist is a bit confused. "Don't you realize that you'll never reach her?" The physicist smiles and replied, "Of course! But I'll get close enough for all practical purposes!" 
Engineer, physicist and mathematican are asked to find the value of 2+2.

Engineer (after 3 minutes, with a slide rule): "The answer is precisely 3.9974."

Physicist (after 6 hours of experiments): "The value is approximately 4.002, with an error of plus-or-minus 0.005."

Mathematician (after a week of calculation): "Well, I haven't found an answer yet but I CAN prove that an answer exists." 

Dean, to the physics department. "Why do I always have to give you guys so much money, for laboratories and expensive equipment and stuff. Why couldn't you be like the math department - all they need is money for pencils, paper and waste-paper baskets. Or even better, like the philosophy department. All they need are pencils and paper." 
Engineer, physicist and mathematican are all challenged with a problem: to fry an egg when there is a fire in the house. The engineer just grabs a huge bucket of water and runs over to the fire, putting it out. The physicist thinks for a long while, and then measures a precise amount of water into a container. He takes it over to the fire, pours it on and with the last drop the fire goes out. The mathematican pores over pencil and paper. After a few minutes he goes "Aha! A solution exists!" and goes back to frying the egg.

Sequel: This time they are asked simply to fry an egg (no fire). The engineer just does it, kludging along; the physicist calculates carefully and produces a carefully cooked egg; and the mathematican lights a fire in the corner, and says "I have reduced it to the previous problem." 

Mummy snake to baby snakes: "Well, you're old enough now to survive in the real world. So here are the facts of life. Go forth and multiply."

Little snakes: "But we can't, we're adders."

Mummy snake: "You can do it in logs." 

Q: What's yellow and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice.
A: Zorn's Lemon. 
Q: What do you get if you cross an elephant with a zebra.
A: Elephant zebra sin theta.
Q: What do you get if you cross an elephant with a mountain climber.
A: You can't do that. A mountain climber is a scalar. 
Q: To what question is the answer "9W."
A: "Dr. Wiener, do you spell your name with a V?" 
A somewhat advanced society has figured how to package basic knowledge in pill form.

A student, needing some learning, goes to the pharmacy and asks what kind of knowledge pills are available. The pharmacist says "Here's a pill for English literature." The student takes the pill and swallows it and has new knowledge about English literature!

"What else do you have?" asks the student.

"Well, I have pills for art history, biology, and world history," replies the pharmacist.

The student asks for these, and swallows them and has new knowledge about those subjects.

Then the student asks, "Do you have a pill for math?"

The pharmacist says "Wait just a moment", and goes back into the storeroom and brings back a whopper of a pill and plunks it on the counter.

"I have to take that huge pill for math?" inquires the student.

The pharmacist replied "Well, you know math always was a little hard to swallow." 

Q:What did the acorne say when it grew up?
A:Geomtry 
Q. What does a mathematician do when he's constipated?

A. He works it out with a pencil. 

Three employees of NOSC (an engineer, a physicist and a mathematician) are staying in a hotel while attending a technical seminar. The engineer wakes up and smells smoke. He goes out into the hallway and sees a fire, so he fills a trashcan from his room with water and douses the fire. He goes back to bed. Later, the physicist wakes up and smells smoke. He opens his door and sees a fire in the hallway. He walks down the hall to a fire hose and after calculating the flame velocity, distance, water pressure, trajectory, etc. extinguishes the fire with the minimum amount of water and energy needed. Later, the mathematician wakes up and smells smoke. He goes to the hall, sees the fire and then the fire hose. He thinks for a moment and then exclaims, "Ah, a solution exists!" and then goes back to bed. 
"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems" -- P. Erdos 
Three standard Peter Lax jokes (heard in his lectures) :

1. What's the contour integral around Western Europe?

Answer: Zero, because all the Poles are in Eastern Europe! Addendum: Actually, there ARE some Poles in Western Europe, but they are removable!

2. An English mathematician (I forgot who) was asked by his very religious colleague: Do you believe in one God?

Answer: Yes, up to isomorphism!

3. What is a compact city?

It's a city that can be guarded by finitely many near-sighted policemen! 

Q: What's purple and commutes?

A: An abelian grape. 

Q: What's yellow, and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice?

A: Zorn's Lemon. 

Q: Why did the mathematician name his dog "Cauchy"?

A: Because he left a residue at every pole. 

Q: Why is it that the more accuracy you demand from an interpolation function, the more expensive it becomes to compute?

A: That's the Law of Spline Demand. 

"Algebraic symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about." 
Moebius always does it on the same side.

Heisenberg might have slept here. 

There was a mad scientist ( a mad ...social... scientist ) who kidnapped three colleagues, an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician, and locked each of them in seperate cells with plenty of canned food and water but no can opener.

A month later, returning, the mad scientist went to the engineer's cell and found it long empty. The engineer had constructed a can opener from pocket trash, used aluminum shavings and dried sugar to make an explosive, and escaped.

The physicist had worked out the angle necessary to knock the lids off the tin cans by throwing them against the wall. She was developing a good pitching arm and a new quantum theory.

The mathematician had stacked the unopened cans into a surprising solution to the kissing problem; his dessicated corpse was propped calmly against a wall, and this was inscribed on the floor in blood:

Theorem: If I can't open these cans, I'll die.

Proof: assume the opposite... 

There were two men trying to decide what to do for a living. They went to see a counselor, and he decided that they had good problem solving skills.

He tried a test to narrow the area of specialty. He put each man in a room with a stove, a table, and a pot of water on the table. He said "Boil the water". Both men moved the pot from the table to the stove and turned on the burner to boil the water. Next, he put them into a room with a stove, a table, and a pot of water on the floor. Again, he said "Boil the water". The first man put the pot on the stove and turned on the burner. The counselor told him to be an Engineer, because he could solve each problem individually. The second man moved the pot from the floor to the table, and then moved the pot from the table to the stove and turned on the burner. The counselor told him to be a mathematician because he reduced the problem to a previously solved problem. 

Three men are in a hot-air balloon. Soon, they find themselves lost in a canyon somewhere. One of the three men says, "I've got an idea. We can call for help in this canyon and the echo will carry our voices far."

So he leans over the basket and yells out, "Helllloooooo! Where are we?" (They hear the echo several times).

15 minutes later, they hear this echoing voice: "Helllloooooo! You're lost!!"

One of the men says, "That must have been a mathematician."

Puzzled, one of the other men asks, "Why do you say that?"

The reply: "For three reasons. (1) he took a long time to answer, (2) he was absolutely correct, and (3) his answer was absolutely useless." 

(I'm not sure if the following one is a true story or not)
The great logician Betrand Russell (or was it A.N. Whitehead?) once claimed that he could prove anything if given that 1+1=1.
So one day, some smarty-pants asked him, "Ok. Prove that you're the Pope."
He thought for a while and proclaimed, "I am one. The Pope is one. Therefore, the Pope and I are one."
THE STORY OF BABEL:

In the beginning there was only one kind of Mathematician, created by the Great Mathamatical Spirit form the Book: the Topologist. And they grew to large numbers and prospered.

One day they looked up in the heavens and desired to reach up as far as the eye could see. So they set out in building a Mathematical edifice that was to reach up as far as "up" went. Further and further up they went ... until one night the edifice collapsed under the weight of paradox.

The following morning saw only rubble where there once was a huge structure reaching to the heavens. One by one, the Mathematicians climbed out from under the rubble. It was a miracle that nobody was killed; but when they began to speak to one another, SUPRISE of all suprises! they could not understand each other. They all spoke different languages. They all fought amongst themselves and each went about their own way. To this day the Topologists remain the original Mathematicians.

- adapted from an American Indian legend of the Mound Of Babel 

The ark lands after The Flood. Noah lets all the animals out. Says, "Go and multiply." Several months pass. Noah decides to check up on the animals. All are doing fine except a pair of snakes. "What's the problem?" says Noah. "Cut down some trees and let us live there", say the snakes. Noah follows their advice. Several more weeks pass. Noah checks on the snakes again. Lots of little snakes, everybody is happy. Noah asks, "Want to tell me how the trees helped?" "Certainly", say the snakes. "We're adders, and we need logs to multiply." 
What is "pi"?

Mathematician: Pi is thenumber expressing the relationship between the circumference of a circle and its diameter.

Physicist: Pi is 3.1415927plus or minus 0.000000005

Engineer: Pi is about 3. 

Lemma: All horses are the same color.

Proof (by induction):

Case n=1: In a set with only one horse, it is obvious that all horses in that set are the same color.

Case n=k: Suppose you have a set of k+1 horses. Pull one of these horses out of the set, so that you have k horses. Suppose that all of these horses are the same color. Now put back the horse that you took out, and pull out a different one. Suppose that all of the k horses now in the set are the same color. Then the set of k+1 horses are all the same color. We have k true => k+1 true; therefore all horses are the same color. 

Theorem: All horses have an infinite number of legs.

Proof (by intimidation):

Everyone would agree that all horses have an even number of legs. It is also well-known that horses have forelegs in front and two legs in back. 4 + 2 = 6 legs, which is certainly an odd number of legs for a horse to have! Now the only number that is both even and odd is infinity; therefore all horses have an infinite number of legs.

However, suppose that there is a horse somewhere that does not have an infinite number of legs. Well, that would be a horse of a different color; and by the Lemma, it doesn't exist.

QED 

Several students were asked the following problem:

Prove that all odd integers are prime.

Well, the first student to try to do this was a math student. Hey says "hmmm... Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, and by induction, we have that all the odd integers are prime."

Of course, there are some jeers from some of his friends. The physics student then said, "I'm not sure of the validity of your proof, but I think I'll try to prove it by experiment." He continues, "Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is ... uh, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime, 13 is prime... Well, it seems that you're right."

The third student to try it was the engineering student, who responded, "Well, actually, I'm not sure of your answer either. Let's see... 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is ..., 9 is .., well if you approximate, 9 is prime, 11 is prime, 13 is prime... Well, it does seem right."

Not to be outdone, the computer science student comes along and says "Well, you two sort've got the right idea, but you'd end up taking too long doing it. I've just whipped up a program to REALLY go and prove it..." He goes over to his terminal and runs his program. Reading the output on the screen he says, "1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime...." 

Ya' hear about the geometer who went to the beach to catch the rays and became a tangent ? 
My geometry teacher was sometimes acute, and sometimes obtuse, but always, he was right. 
A biologist, a statistician, a mathematician and a computer scientist are on a photo-safari in africa. They drive out on the savannah in their jeep, stop and scout the horizon with their binoculars.

The biologist : "Look! There's a herd of zebras! And there, in the middle : A white zebra! It's fantastic ! There are white zebra's ! We'll be famous !"

The statistician : "It's not significant. We only know there's one white zebra."

The mathematician : "Actually, we only know there exists a zebra, which is white on one side."

The computer scientist : "Oh, no! A special case!" 

I saw the following scrawled on a math office blackboard in college:

1 + 1 = 3, for large values of 1 

Asked how his pet parrot died, the mathmatican answered "Polynomial. polygon." 
Lumberjacks make good musicians because of their natural logarithms. 
Pie are not square. Pie are round. Cornbread are square. 
A physics joke: "Energy equals milk chocolate square" 
Russell to Whitehead: "My Godel is killing me!" 
A doctor, a lawyer and a mathematician were discussing the relative merits of having a wife or a mistress.

The lawyer says: "For sure a mistress is better. If you have a wife and want a divorce, it causes all sorts of legal problems.

The doctor says: "It's better to have a wife because the sense of security lowers your stress and is good for your health.

The mathematician says: " You're both wrong. It's best to have both so that when the wife thinks you're with the mistress and the mistress thinks you're with your wife --- you can do some mathematics. 

Statisticians probably do it
Algebraists do it in groups. 
Von Neumann and Nobert Weiner were both the subject of many dotty professor stories. Von Neumann supposedly had the habit of simply writing answers to homework assignments on the board (the method of solution being, of course, obvious) when he was asked how to solve problems. One time one of his students tried to get more helpful information by asking if there was another way to solve the problem. Von Neumann looked blank for a moment, thought, and then answered, "Yes.".

Weiner was in fact very absent minded. The following story is told about him: When they moved from Cambridge to Newton his wife, knowing that he would be absolutely useless on the move, packed him off to MIT while she directed the move. Since she was certain that he would forget that they had moved and where they had moved to, she wrote down the new address on a piece of paper, and gave it to him. Naturally, in the course of the day, an insight occurred to him. He reached in his pocket, found a piece of paper on which he furiously scribbled some notes, thought it over, decided there was a fallacy in his idea, and threw the piece of paper away. At the end of the day he went home (to the old address in Cambridge, of course). When he got there he realized that they had moved, that he had no idea where they had moved to, and that the piece of paper with the address was long gone. Fortunately inspiration struck. There was a young girl on the street and he conceived the idea of asking her where he had moved to, saying, "Excuse me, perhaps you know me. I'm Norbert Weiner and we've just moved. Would you know where we've moved to?" To which the young girl replied, "Yes daddy, mommy thought you would forget."

The capper to the story is that I asked his daughter (the girl in the story) about the truth of the story, many years later. She said that it wasn't quite true -- that he never forgot who his children were! The rest of it, however, was pretty close to what actually happened... 

C programmers do it with long pointers.
(Logicians do it) or [not (logicians do it)]. 
Theorem: a cat has nine tails.

Proof:
No cat has eight tails. A cat has one tail more than no cat. Therefore, a cat has nine tails. 

The USDA once wanted to make cows produce milk faster, to improve the dairy industry.

So, they decided to consult the foremost biologists and recombinant DNA technicians to build them a better cow. They assembled this team of great scientists, and gave them unlimited funding. They requested rare chemicals, weird bacteria, tons of quarantine equipment, there was a God-awful typhus epidemic they started by accident, and, 2 years later, they came back with the "new, improved cow." It had a milk production improvement of 2% over the original.

They then tried with the greatest Nobel Prize winning chemists around. They worked for six months, and, after requisitioning tons of chemical equipment, and poisoning half the small town in Colorado where they were working with a toxic cloud from one of their experiments, they got a 5% improvement in milk output.

The physicists tried for a year, and, after ten thousand cows were subjected to radiation therapy, they got a 1% improvement in output.

Finally, in desperation, they turned to the mathematicians. The foremost mathematician of his time offered to help them with the problem. Upon hearing the problem, he told the delegation that they could come back in the morning and he would have solved the problem. In the morning, they came back, and he handed them a piece of paper with the computations for the new, 300% improved milk cow.

The plans began:

"A Proof of the Attainability of Increased Milk Output from Bovines:

Consider a spherical cow......" 

Theorem : All positive integers are equal.

Proof : Sufficient to show that for any two positive integers, A and B, A = B. Further, it is sufficient to show that for all N > 0, if A and B (positive integers) satisfy (MAX(A, B) = N) then A = B.

Proceed by induction.
If N = 1, then A and B, being positive integers, must both be 1. So A = B.

Assume that the theorem is true for some value k. Take A and B with MAX(A, B) = k+1. Then MAX((A-1), (B-1)) = k. And hence (A-1) = (B-1). Consequently, A = B. 

I believe in this and it has been proven by research: He who fucks nuns will later join the church. The Clash

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