Several people are asked to prove that all odd integers greater than 2 are prime.
- Tenured mathematician: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is not prime. Ha! A counterexample.
- Untenured mathematician: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime… so by induction, all subsequent odd integers are prime.
- Statistician: Let’s verify this sone several randomly selected odd numbers, say, 23, 47, and 83.
- Computer scientist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, segmentation fault?
- Computer programmer: 3 is prime, 3 is prime, 3 is prime, 3 is prime…
- Physicist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is an experiemntal error, 11 is prime…
- Mechanical engineer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is approximately prime, 11 is prime…
- Civil engineer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime…
- Biologist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is… still awaiting results…
- Psychologist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime but suppresses it, 11 is prime…
- Economist: 2 is prime, 4 is prime, 6 is prime…
- Politician: Shouldn’t the goal really be to create a greater society where all numbers are prime?
- Sarah Palin: What’s a prime?
i love the civil engineer one
Comment by bluquar — 07.8.09 @
The Computer Programmer should be more like: 1, 1, 1, 0, 1…
Comment by Artifex — 07.17.09 @
I was laughing, right up until I saw the last one. You guys just can’t let it go can you? Pathetic.
Comment by ron — 07.18.09 @
Lol…so true! I love the last one.
Comment by afaf — 07.20.09 @
Leonhard Euler discovered that 2^32 + 1 = 4294967297 is divisible by 641 and so is not prime. http://www.gap-system.org/~history/HistTopics/Prime_numbers.html
Comment by Eddie — 08.5.09 @
This is great! Another Mathematics site that’s also pretty good is the one I just came from http://mymathgenius.blogspot.com/ but this one is great for a laugh.
Comment by Steve — 08.7.09 @
I was laughing all the way through then I read the comments and died.
Comment by baslisks — 09.12.09 @
Quit your whining ron.
Comment by Casey — 09.21.09 @
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Pingback by Prime numbers (humorous) — 10.9.09 @
Number 3: We can’t let it go that almost half of America wanted to elect, as vice president, a woman who can’t accurately describe what the 3 branches of our government do? No… hell no. We cannot let that go. 10:1 she actually doesn’t know what a prime number is.
Comment by Jason E — 10.10.09 @
This was grand.
To baslisks: never, ever read comments. You should know this.
Also, and I quote: “]something insane supporting whatever Glenn Beck or one of the others said last night.]”
QED
Comment by Rivin — 10.24.09 @
As a computer programmer, I am offended by the lack of inventive computer programming humor. It could go like:
- 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 etc are primes in this release. 9 is a known problem in this version of the theorem, but we’ll fix in in the next release. or
- 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 are primes …Nobody really is going to expect us to handle the 9 case …:)
besides that, yeah it was funny …even the Palin bit.
Comment by steve — 10.28.09 @
ron: You’re right, Sarah is pathetic….which makes her ideal joke material.
Comment by Bob Fry — 11.1.09 @
No, we can’t let it go… she was an idiot and “you people” stood behind her because of her political affiliation, not her positions.
> I was laughing, right up until I saw the last one. You guys just can’t let it go can you? Pathetic.
>
> Comment by ron — 07.18.09 @
Comment by Chris — 11.2.09 @