Friday, August 22, 2008,
6:25 PM
Be that as it may, some of you may have had occasion to run into mathematicians and to
wonder, therefore, how they got that way...
—Tom Lehrer
This was quoted by my Set Theory lecturer, Dr. Johanna Franklin, in one of our notes. She's a wonderful lecturer, and has a great personality at that too!
Anyway, sometimes we do wonder how some mathematicians got that way. It'll be totally weird to encounter the following, erm... encounters:
Case 1: Asking for directions
You: Excuse me, sir, how do you get from Klang to Shah Alam?
Mathematician: The solution exists!!!
You: +.+
Case 2: Asking a mathematician for a meal
You: Hey, dude, come let's have lunch together in the canteen.
Mathematician: Assume there are N students and M staff. Then, assume all of them eat at the same canteen. Then the total number of people eating at the canteen at the same time is (N+M). The Axiom of Tables suggest that there are for all t in Z+, where t is the number of tables in the canteen, n
You: +.+
Case 3: Asking a mathematician a math question
You: I have 1 apple. If my uncle Bob gives me another apple, how many apples do I have?
Mathematician: You would have 1 apple more than you had before.
You: Correct. 1+1=2, right?
Mathematician: Not necessarily. Consider 1 as the multiplicative identity of the field, F. Then, assume field F has exactly 4 elements. We can then define 1 as the additive inverse of itself, and hence, 1+1=0.
You: +.+
Case 4: Asking a mathematician for an opinion
You: What do you think? Do I look fat in this?
Mathematician: Define fat.
You: Well, fat as in, really big in size?
Mathematician: Define big.
You: Big as in, huge?
Mathematician: Define huge.
You: +.+
Of course, I'm not like that. Am I?
~Falcon, OUT!
