Maths humour Some famous maths quotes a good site
Who needs math’s anyway?
I believe this
list was collated by one of the math’s teachers at
So that's 57 runs needed
by Hampshire in 11 overs, and it doesn't need a calculator to tell us that the
run rate required is 5.1818 recurring.
Norman Demesquita
And Ian Greig's on 8 including two
fours.
Jim Laker
And Meade had a hat-trick. He
scored two goals.
Richard Whitmore
There is no change in the top six
in Division II except that Leeds United have moved
into the top six.
Fred Dinage
So it means mathematically,
Peter Jones
....and with eight minutes left
the game could be won or lost in the next five to ten minutes.
Jimmy Armfield
And Ritchie has scored 11 goals,
exactly double the number he scored last season.
Alan Parry
....the lead is now 6.9 seconds.
In fact it's just under 7 seconds.
The gap between the two cars is
0.9 of a second which is less than a second.
Attached to the bottom corner is a
rope of finite length.
Gordon Burns
It is now
Tom Boswell
Of course Kirkpatrick will serve
nowhere near the 900 years to which he has been sentenced because the system in
Northern Irish correspondent
And for those who wish to deal in
metric that's a girth of 22 feet and a height of about 230 feet.
David Bellamy
Peter Powell: So your son was born
on the very day Radio 1 actually started! Caller: Yes, that's correct. He was
born 16 years ago today. Peter Powell: How old is your son now?
It was like the 60's but it wasn't
the 60's it was 1969.
Jimmy Saville
In those days, number two was in a
funny sort of way, also number one.
Jimmy Saville
And you can't get nearer to the
top ten than number twelve.
Jimmy Saville
....and Dusty Hare kicked 19 of
the 17 points.
David Coleman
Ninety-nine times out of a
thousand he would have potted that ball.
Ted Lowe
Bill Tindall has done a bit of
mental arithmetic with a calculator.
John Arlott
The Test Match begins in 10
minutes, that's our time of course.
David Coleman
The dart is almost diametrically
in the middle of the treble twenty.
Dave Lanning
....only one word for that - magic
darts!
Tony Green
We are now in the third and final
quarter of this game.
Irish TV commentator
The speed of light is very fast.
Carl Sagan
53% of all cars coming into
Monty Modlyn
At seven Eamon will approach
another surprised personality with his famous three words "This is your
life".
Kath Secher
That one sounds as if it was made
in 1965, but in fact it's older than that - it came out in 1972.
Jimmy Saville
And at number five, down seven
places, the Gibson Brothers.
Kid Jensen
....and it's exactly 9 minutes
past 9 - and that doesn't happen very often.
Tim Boswell
There's one minute sixty seconds
to go.
Eddie Waring
He made a break of 98 which is
almost one hundred.
Alan Weekes
We've had three other snooker
centuries - this will make the fifth.
Ted Lowe
Oh, that cross court angle was so
acute it doesn't exist.
Dan Maskell
The following are just some of the best maths quotes I
have found.
There are thousands of sites dedicated to quotes which
are humorous, scientific, mathematical etc.
Among others I visited the following which are worth
looking at:
www.math.furman.edu/~mwoodard/mqs/mquot.html
www.f2.org/humour/language/quotes/maths.html
www.gateways2learning.com/Quotes.htm
www.angelfire.com/my/mcansh/docs/ Mathematical_Quotes.doc
http://www.simonsingh.net/owtasite/Mathematics_Links.html good math’s humour - quotes site links to
furman
Wherever there is number there is beauty
Proclus
A man whose
mind has gone astray should study mathematics.
Francis Bacon
Medicine makes
people ill, mathematics make them sad and theology makes them sinful.
Martin Luther
In mathematics
you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
Johann von Neumann
Mathematicians
are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own
language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Maxims and Reflexions, 1829)
From Raven's Memorable
Quotes from Alt.Sysadmin.Recovery:
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative
results. -- Ben (float)
...
More quotes from alt.sysadmin.recovery in Microsoft
Forlorn and Computing Quotes
Quotes from the Mathematical
Quotation Server.
The cowboys have a way of trussing up a steer or a
pugnacious bronco which fixes the brute so that it can neither move nor think.
This is the hog-tie, and it is what Euclid did to geometry.
-- Eric Bell, in R Crayshaw-Williams The
Search For Truth, p. 191.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and
all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the
mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to
confine man in the bonds of Hell.
-- Saint Augustine, DeGenesi ad
Litteram, Book II, xviii, 37 [Note:
mathematician = astrologer].
Computers are useless. They can
only give you answers.''
Pablo Picasso
``He who can properly define and
divide is to be considered a god.''
Plato (ca 429-347 BC)
``Let no-one ignorant of geometry
enter."
Inscription at the door of Plato's academy
``Geometry is the science of
correct reasoning on incorrect figures.''
George Polya
``Any time your
are stuck on a problem, introduce more notation.''
Chris Skinner (Plenary Lecture Aug. 3, 1997, Topics in Number Theory, Penn
State)
``If you think it's simple, then
you have misunderstood the problem.''
Bjarne Strustrup (lecture at
``A mathematician who is not also
something of a poet will never be a complete mathematician.''
Karl Weierstrass
One good thing
about teaching calculus is that you develop a hardened attitude towards
repeating yourself.''
Phil Hanlon
For
the things of this world cannot be made known without a
knowledge of mathematics.
Opus Majus part 4 Distinctia Prima cap 1,
1267. Bacon, Roger
Numbers
are intellectual witnesses that belong only to mankind
Balzac, Honore de (1799 - 1850)
Out of nothing I have created a
strange new universe.
[A reference to the creation of a non-euclidean geometry.]
Bolyai, János (1802 - 1860)
What I tell you three times is
true.
The Hunting of the Snark.
The different
branches of Arithmetic -- Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.
Carroll,
Lewis
You can only find truth with
logic if you have already found truth without it.
The Man who was Orthodox. 1963.
It isn't that they can't see
the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.
The Point of a Pin in The Scandal of
Father Brown.
Chesterton,
G. K. (1874 - 1936)
Cogito Ergo Sum. "I think, therefore I
am."
Discours de la Méthode. 1637.
I hope that posterity will
judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to
those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure
of discovery.
La Geometrie.
Perfect numbers like perfect
men are very rare.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared,
omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.
With me everything turns into mathematics.
Descartes, René
(1596-1650)
There are three kinds of lies:
lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Mark Twain. Autobiography.
Do not worry about your
difficulties in mathematics, I assure you that mine
are greater.
Albert
Einstein
Sir, I have found you an
argument. I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
J. Boswell The Life of SamuelJohnson,
1784.
He uses statistics as a drunken
man uses lamp posts -- for support rather than illumination.
Treasury of Humorous Quotations.
The words figure and fictitious
both derive from the same Latin root, fingere. Beware!
Facts from Figures.
Moroney,
M.J.
In mathematics you don't
understand things. You just get used to them.
In G. Zukav The Dancing Wu Li Masters
It is hard to know
what you are talking about in mathematics, yet no one questions the validity of
what you say. There is no other realm of discourse half so queer.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics,
von Neumann, Johann (1903 - 1957)
The calculus is the greatest
aid we have to the application of physical truth in the broadest sense of the
word.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims,
Osgood, W. F.
One of the endearing things
about mathematicians is the extent to which they will go to avoid doing any
real work.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles,
Pordage,
Matthew
If I feel unhappy, I do
mathematics to become happy. If I am happy, I do mathematics to keep happy.
P. Turán, "The Work of Alfréd Rényi", Matematikai Lapok 21,
1970, pp 199 - 210.
Rényi,
Alfréd
I am ill at these numbers.
Hamlet.
The mathematician is fascinated
with the marvelous beauty of the forms he constructs, and in their beauty he
finds everlasting truth.
Shaw,
J. B.
It can be of no
practical use to know that Pi is irrational, but if we can know, it surely
would be intolerable not to know.
Titchmarsh, E.
C.
Algebra and money are
essentially levelers; the first intellectually, the second effectively.
Weil,
Simone (1909 - 1943)
The science of pure mathematics
... may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.
No Roman ever died
in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.
[A reference to the death of Archimedes.]
Whitehead,
Alfred North
[Mathematics] is an independent world
Created out of pure intelligence
Wordsworth,
William (1770 - 1850)
Education is not filling a bucket but lighting a
fire.
-William Butler Yeats
One for Halloween
Life without maths is like a pumpkin at Halloween – hollow
Toby Cooke (S5 pupil at
Finally for more jokes try
the following:
www.workjoke.com/projoke22.htm