Q: Was Newton sick very often?
A: Yes, so often that he called himself "I sick" Newton.
(Time to go to L'hopital!)
George Gamow was an American popular
science writer born in Odesa, Ukraine. The following is slightly
edited from the original which appears in his autobiography "My
World Line," 1970, Viking Press.
The following pages of his book, pp. 19, 20, should be part of
every calculus course which includes Taylor's series.
===== QUOTE: Here is a story from one of my friends who in 1919
was a young professor of physics in Odesa. His name was Igor Tamm
(Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1958).
Sometime in 1919, after arriving in a nearby village, while Odesa
was occupied by the Reds, Tamm was negotiating with a villager as to
how many chickens he could get for a dozen silver spoons. He was
captured by one of the Makhno bands who were roaming the country,
harassing the Reds. Seeing his city clothes, his captors took him to
the ataman, a bearded fellow in a tall black fur hat, with machine
gun cartridge ribbons crossed on his chest, and a couple of hand
grenades hanging on his belt. "You miserable communist agitator,
undermining our Mother Ukraine! The punishment is death!"
"No, no," answered Tamm. "I am only a professor
from the University of Odesa and have come to buy some food."
"Rubbish," said the ataman. "What kind of professor
are you?"
"I teach mathematics," responded Tamm meekly.
"Mathematics," sneered the ataman. "Then you should
be able to give me a bound on the error one makes by truncating
McLaurin's series at the n-th term. If you cannot answer, you will be
shot."
Tamm gasped to hear this question in higher mathematics come out
of the mouth of the ruffian leader. With shaking hand, under the
muzzle of a gun, Tamm was able to present an answer to the ataman.
"Correct," bellowed the ataman. "You may go free."
Who was this ataman? No one will ever know. If he was not killed in
battle, then he might have become an equally forgotten professor of
mathematics in some Ukrainian university. =====ENDQUOTE For anyone
who has taught mathematics and has had to answer that plaguing
question "What use is this stuff?" one answer could be that
it could save your life (if you are ever captured by a member of the
Makhno bands).
What are the similarities between a cat and a bicycle?
They both can climb trees, except for the bicycle.
Q: Why did the chicken cross the Moebius strip?
A: To get to the other ... er, um ...
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