Wild About Math!

Need an excuse for not having done your Math homework?

Computer Scientist, Ph.D. Mathematician, and International Math Olympics Gold Medalist Tanya Khovanova has a nice page of unique Math humor.

What caught my attention, in particular, was her list of 10 reasons her kids have given for not doing their Math homework. Even if you don’t understand the higher Math behind some of the jokes you should still get a chuckle out of them.

1. I had a constant amount of homework. I tried to derive its purpose, but I got nothing.
2. I assumed that all the homework you assigned me was Abelian, so I thought that I could pass it in and then do it.
3. I could only get arbitrarily close to my textbook, but I could never reach it.
4. I am sure that I put it inside my Klein Bottle last night, but this morning I could not find it.
5. I locked it in my trunk, but a four-dimensional dog got in and ate it.
6. My little sister cut it into a finite number of pieces, and when I put it back together, I got a proof of the Banach-Tarski Paradox.
7. I did part of it; the part I have left to do, is 0.999999999…
8. My homework is a constructive demonstration of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem. That is, it is possible to assign a homework that cannot be completed.
9. I wanted to, but I couldn’t find its Godel Number.
10. I completed my homework, but then I beheld it and saw that it lacked character, personality - there was no “me” in it, so I multiplied it by i, and it became imaginary!

Slightly off topic, but also quite funny, is also a list of 7 reasons her kids have given for not having done their Physics homework.

1. I accidentally mixed my homework with my antihomework, and it exploded.
2. The gravitational constant changed sign, and my homework flew away.
3. I tried to build a black hole in my bedroom, when my homework suddenly disappeared.
4. According to Newton’s third law, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I was afraid of what my homework could do to me if I worked on it too hard.
5. My Biology homework ate my homework!
6. My Physics homework disintegrated into atoms and fell through my floor to say hello to my neighbors.
7. I can’t go against conservation of energy and the minimal action principle.

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