jack

I agonised over that phrasing; I wanted people to make the "human" assumption, but not actually I lead them astray. Saying "If two leave" could work, but would need some more context...

I evnetually decided that if an elephant was an engineer it was a person.

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vyvyan.livejournal.com

Oh I see. I couldn't actually make sense of the joke at all until you said that - having realised that the engineer was also an elephant, I wondered where the second person was who would leave with the mathematician. Maybe they were already in the building? But even then, once the two people left, the engineer-elephant would remain, so the building would not be empty. So I wondered if the explanation depended on some higher mathematical knowledge which I was lacking!

Maybe you could phrase it as "If two individuals leave..."? I think people==humans for me (so I wouldn't regard intelligent aliens as people either).

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But doesn't that lose some of the delayed-impact? I liked the braintwistyness of it.

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So I wondered if the explanation depended on some higher mathematical knowledge which I was lacking!

ROFL. If only. I tried, but it wasn't amenable to set theory.

Sorry, I knew it might be a problem. I tend to use human for homo sapiens (or maybe other homo species), and person for any individualised sapience, but I know it's mostly moot and not what most people do.

"A pianist leaves a building and an engineer, an elephant, and a mathematician enter it. The mathematician says 'if two of us follow him, the building will be empty again.'"

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An engineer, an elephant, and a mathematician enter an empty building. The engineer leaves. The mathematician says, "if one us leaves, the building will be empty again".

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Nice... but to whom? :)

And I admit mathematicians would say "one of us" refering to a set containing only themselves, but most people wouldn't, so that might add another layer of confusion.

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Double whammy, innit?

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Err, that'd be 'Chris'.

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That's what I assumed. Unfortunately, my ignorance has not yet been dispelled as far as who he is...

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Chris Patten was a minister in John Major's first government and seemed like one of the few of them with any sense. So of course he lost his seat at the 1992 election. Rather than hang around waiting for a Tory safe seat to become available however he then went off to be the last governor of Hong Kong, where he massively annoyed the Chinese government by introducing democratic reforms shortly before the handover (and that's while I like him). He then spent a while as an EU commissioner and is Chancellor of the University of Newcastle and of some other university.

He's written several books. The only one I've read is East and West but I hope to read his more recent works too some time.

Anyway the actually relevant point is that during the 1992 election he was associated with a poster campaign warning of "Labour's double whammy", a previously not widely heard phrase which attracted a certain amount of attention from pundits. (At the time I considered it perfectly obvious what it meant but evidently I was better than national journalists at figuring out what previously unfamiliar words might mean. Or something.)

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e/while/why/ *sigh*

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I should have known that. Thanks.

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...it occurs to me that:

It's unclear whether it's the mathematician or the engineer that's an elephant. This makes it better.
It would be better still if it was a duck, not an elephant.

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* It's unclear whether it's the mathematician or the engineer that's an elephant. This makes it better.

What? Why?

* It would be better still if it was a duck, not an elephant.

What? Why?

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Explaining jokes never works, but.

The recipient of the joke starts thinking there's three people. Then the mathematician's strange remark makes them realize that there must only have been two, relying on the fact that species and speciality could be taken to be orthogonal, for a laugh.

But if they think further then they realize they can eliminate one of the variables - i.e. which of the mathematician and engineer is the elephant - without having to know its value. Probably only a mathematician would think this, and it's this connection between the recipient and the figure in the joke that makes it funny.

As for the latter, because ducks are all-purpose comedy vertebrates.

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Explaining jokes never works, but.

Not to make them funny, but in service of understanding humour... :)

But if they think further then they realize they can eliminate one of the variables - i.e. which of the mathematician and engineer is the elephant - without having to know its value.

Ah! I think I see. I was confused, as I wasn't sure what you were replying to, nor what you were talking about :) So, you suggested (in jest) phrasing it in such a way that one of the mathematician and engineer does an elephant-defining action but without specifying which?

As for the latter, because ducks are all-purpose comedy vertebrates.

Sorry, that second query was mainly for repetition humour value. But I think elephants trump ducks. If you cross them you get platypi, which are *inherently* comic.

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tig-b.livejournal.com

this linked immediately to the mathematicians in Discworld for me.
very good

(

sunflowerinrain reccomended your joke)

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Thank you! And hi.

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Excellent! :)

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liv

The nice librarian is

loreid, but I am not entirely convinced I know who you are, of the people I met at the party. And I like your elephant joke.

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He's the Cambridge Cuddler

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What? Not compared to Mole, or Edith, or, like, Rosy! I didn't cuddle anyone -- but you and Mole and Alison -- on saturday.

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You have been mentioned as a great exponent of the cuddle, hence your soubriquet Jack the Cuddler. Well-deserved, I might add.

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Cuddle^jack... Cuddle^^Jack... I like it. But seriously, Mole is biased, and you just had a "quickie" -- you're seriously maligning the true connosiuers of cambridge :)

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megamole.livejournal.com

Jack/Mole OTP is canonical now, I believe.

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Uh, could we make that fanonical?

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You underestimate my ability to assess cuddles, sir!

Cuddle^^Jack it is :)

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*cuddle*

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:)

I needed that.

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*cuddle*

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Thanks. I am Jack, http://semichrome.net/~jack/img/jack_300.jpg. Hi!

I don't know why elephants seem (a) inherently funny and (b) predominate in maths jokes, but it seems so. Maybe the larger the something is, the harder it is to imagine it being, eg, cross-produced[1] like an abstract vector, despite realityness being more important than size really.

[1] Producted? Mutliplied?

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mhw.livejournal.com

Mutliplied? Dastardly!

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Was that a "Muttleytiplied" pun, or something else?

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mhw.livejournal.com

Unfortunately I don't know how to do an ASCII representation of a Muttley snicker, or else I'd have done one.

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the nice librarian in the black dress I can't remember the name of

I never knew you'd seen me in that black dress...

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Tea/Jack one true pairing... wait, tea sort of is... :)

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whoosh....

straight over head...

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Sorry, what? I was whoosed, or you are whoosed?

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s/(?<os)/h/

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eh? what?

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whoosed straight over my head...

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the-alchemist.livejournal.com

OK, I confess, I really just don't get this at all. Is it based on some stereotype of mathematicians of which I'm not aware?

I understand that the engineer is an elephant and that this makes the mathematician right even though it originally sounds as though s/he isn't, but I don't understand why it's funny or why the mathematician said "If two people leave, the building will be empty again" originally.

Have mercy on me and explain!

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I do have a weakness for jokes no-one understand.

"I understand that the engineer is an elephant and that this makes the mathematician right even though it originally sounds as though s/he isn't,"

That's basically why it's funny. If you don't think that's funny, then I just have a warped sense of humour :)

Subsiduary information is that that sort of pedantic and pointless statement is the sort mathematicians make in leiu of conversation; and possibly relevent knowledge is that a previous joke goes two people go into a (implied but not stated empty) house and three leave, and the engineer says something about measurement error, and the biologist says they bred, and the mathematician says if one more person goes in it'll be empty again.

I didn't know if knowing that would matter or not.

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"I understand that the engineer is an elephant and that this makes the mathematician right even though it originally sounds as though s/he isn't,"

I'm sure the way it's phrased implies necessarily that there are at least 2 elephant (at least one of which is an engineer) and at least 1 mathematician (who for all we know could be an elephant too, but not one of the first two).

Or am I reading too much into it...

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How do you take that reading? Do you mean "An E, an E, and a M" -- that is "wrong", but I'm doing it in the sense of logic puzzles like "Two fathers, two sons, a grandfather, and a grandson enter a building. There are only two men there. How come?"

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