Comment by troutpanda | Hacker News Reader

Comment by troutpanda | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar.

The first mathematician orders a beer.

The second orders half a beer.

"I don't serve half-beers" the bartender replies.

"Excuse me?" Asks mathematician #2.

"What kind of bar serves half-beers?" The bartender remarks. "That's ridiculous."

"Oh c'mon" says mathematician #1 "do you know how hard it is to collect an infinite number of us? Just play along".

"There are very strict laws on how I can serve drinks. I couldn't serve you half a beer even if I wanted to."

"But that's not a problem" mathematician #3 chimes in "at the end of the joke you serve us a whole number of beers. You see, when you take the sum of a continuously halving function-"

"I know how limits work" interjects the bartender.

"Oh, alright then. I didn't want to assume a bartender would be familiar with such advanced mathematics".

"Are you kidding me?" The bartender replies, "you learn limits in like, 9th grade! What kind of mathematician thinks limits are advanced mathematics?"

"HE'S ON TO US" mathematician #1 screeches

Simultaneously, every mathematician opens their mouth and out pours a cloud of multicolored mosquitoes. Each mathematician is bellowing insects of a different shade.

The mosquitoes form into a singular, polychromatic swarm. "FOOLS" it booms in unison, "I WILL INFECT EVERY BEING ON THIS PATHETIC PLANET WITH MALARIA"

The bartender stands fearless against the technicolor hoard. "But wait" he inturrupts, thinking fast, "if you do that, politicians will use the catastrophe as an excuse to implement free healthcare. Think of how much that will hurt the taxpayers!"

The mosquitoes fall silent for a brief moment. "My God, you're right. We didn't think about the economy! Very well, we will not attack this dimension. FOR THE TAXPAYERS!" and with that, they vanish.

A nearby barfly stumbles over to the bartender. "How did you know that that would work?"

"It's simple really" the bartender says. "I saw that the vectors formed a gradient, and therefore must be conservative."

The "you learn limits in like, 9th grade" comment reminds me of this one:

Two mathematicians are in a bar. The first one says to the second that the average person knows very little about basic mathematics. The second one disagrees, and claims that most people can cope with a reasonable amount of math. The first mathematician goes off to the washroom, and in his absence the second calls over the waitress. He tells her that in a few minutes, after his friend has returned, he will call her over and ask her a question. All she has to do is answer one third x cubed.

She repeats "one thir -- dex cue"?

He repeats "one third x cubed".

She says, "one thir dex cuebd"?

Yes, that's right, he says. So she agrees, and goes off mumbling to herself, "one thir dex cuebd...".

The first guy returns and the second proposes a bet to prove his point, that most people do know something about basic math. He says he will ask the blonde waitress an integral, and the first laughingly agrees. The second man calls over the waitress and asks "what is the integral of x squared?".

The waitress says "one third x cubed" and while walking away, turns back and says over her shoulder "plus a constant!"

I don't get it :( Did she know the answer? Then why the confusion at the start?

Yeah that does push it a bit, but the joke is that she didn't understand what he was talking about with the 'onethirdxcubed', mis-parsing it without context. But when asked the integral, she knew the answer; not because she'd been told.

Or in the beginning she’s playing dumb in condescension to the man. The man is trying to prove a point he doesn’t believe. He’s treating her as if she is dumb and doesn’t know the answer, but she does know, and in the end proves she knows it by providing a more complete answer than even the man himself. (You have to assume she knows about the question as the man is telling her the answer.)

Then it could also almost be a joke about parsing and context-free grammars or such.

Ahh, thank you, that makes sense.

The version of the joke I'd heard doesn't include the waitress' attempt to meaninglessly memorize the answer. She simply nods when initially tutored, then later surprises both mathematicians that "an average person" knows how to properly solve an integration problem without any help.

I think that's a better version/telling.

The waitress is a high functioning autistic. She knows calculus, but cannot work out a mishearing of natural language in a noisy environment, and just memorizes the raw phonemes with meaningless word divisons.

I prefer snappier versions of the first half, like:

An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first says, "Give me a beer." The second says, "I'll have a half a beer." The third says, "A quarter of a beer, please." The bartender pours two beers and says, "Come on, people. Know your limits."

Copy-pasted from https://owlcation.com/stem/Worst-Math-Jokes-and-Math-Puns, but there are many similar versions.

Yes. The version before was like going nowhere.

An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar, where a beer costs 3$.

The first mathematician orders a beer.

The second mathematician orders two beers.

The third mathematician orders three beers.

"Oh, I see where this is going" says the bartender and pays a quarter to the first mathematician. "This should cover your check, then."

Is this an antijoke or did I just need to know where it's going, like the bartender? Maybe the bartender is confused?

The joke is that the Ramanujan sum of 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ... is equal to -1/12, so the check should be $3 * -1/12 = minus one quarter. [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_%2B_2_%2B_3_%2B_4_%2B_%E2%8B...

Thanks, that's a bit of math trivia I either forgot or never learned.

This joke relies on the listener knowing that the regularized sum of 1+2+3+... = -1/12.

That's what makes it funny!

Can you explain?

1 + 2 + 3 + ... = -1/12 total beers

-1/12 beers * $3 / beer = -$0.25

negative -> pay them for taking the beer

The -1/12 result is pretty widely known, but not particularly true. It's called "analytic continuation." There's a nonrigorous proof that's accessible at a highschool level - see [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_%2B_2_%2B_3_%2B_4_%2B_%E2%8B...)

Delightfully, this comes up in string theory, in computing the dimensionality of spacetime.

It's referencing a theorem from string theory, as discussed in this Numberphile video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww

The catch is that this isn't valid in what we consider standard mathematics, and you can find many discussions of this online, but this one is fairly short and straightforward: http://curiouscheetah.com/BlogMath/infinity-and-string-theor...

The sum of all positive integers can be somewhat described as negative one twelfth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-d9mgo8FGk

I want to hear Norm Macdonald tell this joke.

So the programmers joke here is the silent nod to jamie zawinski, as a maths savvy guy who is bartending?

https://www.jwz.org/about.html

Don't click this link, copy and paste it. JWZ redirects clicks from HN.

How exactly does a redirect like that work? I didn't know links provided context when loading the subsequent page.

The web server was configured to check the referrer.

   If (referrer === ‘https://news.ycombinator.com’) {

   // show offensive pic of male genitalia 
   }

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer

Or click it too! It's pretty hilarious

> and with that, they vanish.

I feel like that was the most hilarious part, and the joke could have ended there as like an anti-joke of sorts. I like how crazy it got with the "FOOLS" part. Unexpected...

90% through I reached for the flag button, 2 seconds later, I'm weeping. Thank you

I feel like this is every corny maths joke all rolled into one. Very creative.

this has levels.

Ohoooo, that was a nice one !

Hey, it's not cool to steal jokes from /r/antiantijokes. I am a mod there (as evident from my username), and don't appreciate this. The joke is hilarious though.

> Hey, it's not cool to steal jokes from /r/antiantijokes.

When is it okay to repeat a joke from the internet and when is it not?

https://www.reddit.com/r/AntiAntiJokes/comments/91kpa0/an_in...

Always and Never, at the same time.

Joke piracy is rampant these days...

I had no idea where this was from. Sadly the guy who sent it to me didn't tell me the joke was under copyright

You never googled the joke to see where it was from?

Who the heck does that, and why???

do you google jokes..?

so many poor poor redditors are going to have trouble feeding their children because of this tragic joke piracy ;(

I'm surprised you think no one on r/antiantijokes stole that joke to put it there

Are you saying you've never told a joke without knowing (or mentioning) the source...?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com