Excerpts from Foolproof: A Sampling of Mathematical Folk Humor:
- Q:Why did the mathematician name his dog “Cauchy”?
- A:Because he left a residue at every pole.
- Q:What do you call a young eigensheep?
- A:A lamb, duh!
My favorite is more risque:
Q: What does a topologist call a virgin?
A: Simply connected.
I found this document while riploring— a newly minted word, yes :)– other blogs for additions to my “Also Consider” sidebar.
So I was surfing dmoz because I have nothing better to do that doesn’t qualify as work too serious to be done late at night when I’m supposed to be relaxing, when I came across this interesting Perl script:
RFCUtil Perl script allowing access to RFCs by number and full-text search of all documents. It features command line switches to spawn lynx or w3m to view the RFC, dump to file for offline viewing, or mailing to an address.
I went to the site, started looking at the code, and realized that I really hate trying to read other people’s Perl code. Most people, I would guess, don’t really enjoy reading anyone else’s code; this was in addition to that natural disinclination. It’s because Perl is such a personal language, and lends itself to weird convolutions. At the time you’re writing, that can seem the natural way to you, but by writing in such a selfish manner, you lose an important component of the program: the ability to communicate purpose through structure. In fact, I would say Perl is a pretty bad language, because of that shortcoming.
Somewhere, somewhen, (maybe on alt.math, or some other newsgroup) I recall someone making the comment that tv producers have made a show about every profession… except mathematics. That seems to have changed, with the new CBS show Numbers, that starts this January. The premise is that a mathematician helps his brother at the FBI find killers. Sound bites: “people lie, numbers don’t”, “I can design an equation that shows hotspots [where people will be killed?]”. Seems kind of hokey— but at least it isn’t just CSI with math added. Maybe it will something like the Fox? show John Doe; that was a good show, even if it wasn’t about a mathematician.
Update: Then name of the interpreter is IPS, and it has a home of its own on the web at http://www.ugrad.math.ubc.ca:8093/index.html.
Finally, after year(s?) of intermittent but serious searching, I found a free Java implementation of a Postscript interpreter; cf http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/graphics/, for a link at the bottom of the page to the code and user manual. Relevant page excerpt:
Scott Drader has written a PostScript interpreter in Java, using the Java 5.0 2D library, that allows interaction as programs are being run. This includes being able to step through a PostScript program, setting breaks and variable watches. The present version is still a bit slow and buggy, but worth looking into. Problems should by all means be reported to cass@math.ubc.ca.
I hope it’s better than Toastscript– the Java-based Postscript Level 1 interpreter that Google returns in response to all searches that seems to have completely disappeared off the Internet. I haven’t figured out how to use it yet, much less taken a good look at the code. One cool feature though, after downloading the jar— I think this is a relatively new feature of the jar file format–, you can run it off the Windows desktop by double clicking. I haven’t figured out how to load images yet. Come to think of it, I completely forgot I downloaded the manual; guess I should read it.
Tonight, I’m going to be working on an interesting problem that Zach posted to the UHME mailing list. Apparently, he had asked it earlier, and no one attempted it. I feel up to it, after a semester of real analysis, using Rudin’s horrible book. The experience had to be good for something 
Let
be the function defined by the rule
where
denotes the fractional part of
. Determine, with proof, the exact value of
Who doesn’t love coloring problems? They’re like one of the staples of recreational mathematics, right up there with combinatorial and polynomial problems. They occur in serious math too: the four color theorem, for example, and various other graph theoretical questions. Some of these have been found to have practical applications. Maybe this one, which has stumped the UHME mailing list for a while now (and is therefore not likely to be worked on much more) has a practical application:
Color the (x,y)-plane in two colors, i.e. color every point in the
plane either blue or red, say. Will there always exist two points at
distance one which are the same color? What about three colors? Four
colors? More?
I recall being told that a lot of the problems that one might encounter in a math competition and at first have no idea how to approach are actually quite easy one you know the trick. Here are some examples, taken shamelessly from Winning Solutions by Lozansky and Rousseau:
are any two natural numbers, then 
. 
are positive integers, then
is an integer.I won’t give any hints, however…
Is Google trying to take over the world? First, their incredibly successful and popular search engine, that becomes synonymous with the use of Internet searching technologies. Then, Gmail, which busts pass the previous storage limits of web-based email services and in my opinion, has begun a paradigm shift in email storage techniques analogous to the manner in which Java supplemented inheritance with interfaces— viz., the replacement of a mutually exclusive, hierarchical folder structure with a flat and versatile labeling system. Now, there’s Google print, a system which allows publishers to put parts of their books online for searching; currently in beta test. Then there’s Google desktop search, your own personal Google for your computer. Wow. What is up with the crazy programmers at Google? Are they bored?
So I got my wisdom teeth pulled this morning… all 6 of them. Surprisingly, it doesn’t hurt now; the most annoying thing about the experience was having a numb lower lip. I really enjoyed the sedation: after the doctor put in the IV, I started feeling deliciously woozy after about 15 seconds, then I just zoned out. Even though the experience was under `conscious sedation’, I don’t remember anything about the operation. After I woke up, I knew I was saying strange things, I felt so unrestrained. The pain will probably come tomorrow.