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A mathematical joke is a form of humor which relies on aspects of mathematics or a stereotype of mathematicians to derive humor. The humor may come from a pun, or from a double meaning of a mathematical term, or from a lay person's misunderstanding of a mathematical concept. Mathematician and author John Allen Paulos in his book ''Mathematics and Humor'' described several ways that mathematics, generally considered a dry, formal activity, overlaps with humor, a loose, irreverent activity: both are forms of "intellectual play"; both have "logic, pattern, rules, structure"; and both are "economical and explicit". Some performers combine mathematics and jokes to entertain and/or teach math. ==Pun-based jokes== Some jokes use a mathematical term with a second non-technical meaning as the punchline of a joke. :Q. What's purple and commutes? :A. An abelian grape. (A pun on ''abelian group''.)〔, citing Renteln, P. and Dundes, A. "Foolproof: A Sampling of Mathematical Folk Humor." Notices Amer. Math. Soc. 52, 24–34, 2005.〕 Occasionally multiple mathematical puns appear in the same jest: :"When Noah sends his animals to go forth and multiply, a pair of snakes replies "We can't multiply, we're adders" — so Noah builds them a log table." This invokes four double meanings: adder (snake) vs. addition (algebraic operation); multiplication (biological reproduction) vs. multiplication (algebraic operation); log (cut tree trunk) vs. log (logarithm); finally, multiplication is done by adding logs (mathematical logarithm) Other jokes create a double meaning from a direct calculation involving facetious variable names, such as this retold from ''Gravity's Rainbow'': :Person 1: What's the integral of 1/cabin with respect to cabin? :Person 2: A log cabin. :Person 1: No, a houseboat; you forgot to add the C! The first part of this joke relies on the fact that the primitive (formed when finding the antiderivative) of the function 1/''x'' is log(''x''). The second part is then based on the fact that the antiderivative is actually a class of functions, requiring the inclusion of a constant of integration, usually denoted as ''C''—something which calculus students may forget. Thus, the indefinite integral of 1/cabin is "log(cabin) + ''C''", or "A log cabin plus the sea", i.e., "A houseboat". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mathematical joke」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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