Engineer, Scientist, and Mathematician Jokes

Engineers, Scientists, and Mathematicians... these three disciplines are responsible for making your life something other than a daily quest to forage enough food to survive while trying to kill off your neighbors. And the lack of respect given to these world shaping intellectual titans by the general public is only matched by the mutual contempt in which they hold each other. They form an awkward three way alliance against the forces of chaos: Mathematicians develop consistent abstract structures and formal languages with precise meaning, Scientists use these formulae to describe reality, and Engineers use this understanding of reality to try and do something useful. Or to put it another way:

• An engineer thinks that equations are an approximation to reality. A physicist thinks reality is an approximation to equations. And a mathematician just doesn't care.

By way of example, what follows is a series of jokes contrasting the professions at each other's expense, along with some others. Hopefully these will still be funny/comprehensible to someone without a stake in this competition for intellectual bragging rights.

• An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician are shown a pasture with a herd of sheep, and told to put them inside the smallest possible amount of fence.
  
  The engineer is first. He makes a square fence around the sheep, declaring it to be the simplest to build.
  
  The physicist is next, and he creates a circular fence around the sheep, arguing that it offers the greatest area for the smallest amount of fence.
  
  The mathematician is last. After giving the problem a little thought, he builds a fence around himself and defines himself to be on the outside.
• A mathematician and his best friend, an engineer, attend a public lecture on geometry in thirteen-dimensional space. "How did you like it?" the mathematician wants to know after the talk.
  
  "My head's spinning", the engineer confesses. "How can you develop any intuition for thirteen-dimensional space?"
  
  "Well, it's not even difficult. All I do is visualize the situation in arbitrary N-dimensional space and then set N = 13."
• An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician on a train crossing the border into Canada. As they look out the window of the train, they see a single black sheep standing in a field.
  
  The engineer says "Aha, all sheep in Canada are black!"
  
  The physicist looks pained and replies "No no no, we can only say that some sheep in Canada are black".
  
  The mathematician scoffs at this, and says "No. All we can truly say is that in Canada there is one sheep which is black on one side."
• One day a mathematician decides that he is sick of math. So, he walks down to the fire department and announces that he wants to become a fireman.The fire chief says, "Well, you look like a good guy. I'd be glad to hire you, but first I have to give you a little test."
  
  The firechief takes the mathematician to the alley behind the fire department which contains a dumpster, a spigot, and a hose. The chief then says, "OK, you're walking in the alley and you see the dumpster here is on fire. What do you do?"
  
  The mathematician replies, "Well, I hook up the hose to the spigot, turn the water on, and put out the fire."The chief says, "That's great... perfect. Now I have to ask you just one more question. What do you do if you're walking down the alley and you see the dumpster is not on fire?"
  
  The mathematician puzzles over the question for awhile and he finally says, "I light the dumpster on fire."
  
  The chief yells, "What? That's horrible! Why would you light the dumpster on fire?"
  
  The mathematician replies, "Well, that way I reduce the problem to one I've already solved."
• A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were all given a red rubber ball and told to find the volume.
  
  The mathematician carefully measured the diameter and evaluated a triple integral.
  
  The physicist filled a beaker with water, put the ball in the water, and measured the total displacement.
  
  The engineer grabbed his reference manual, looked up the model of the ball and checked the serial numbers in his ball manufacturers table, cross-referencing the columns for "red" and "rubber" to look up the answer.
• A math and engineering convention was being held. On the train to the convention, there were both math majors and engineering majors. Each of the math majors had his/her own train ticket. But the Engineers had only ONE ticket for all of them. The math majors started laughing and snickering. The engineers ignored the laughter.
  
  Then, one of the engineers said, "Here comes the conductor". All of the engineers piled into the bathroom. The math majors were puzzled. The conductor came aboard and collected tickets from all the math majors. He went to the bathroom, knocked on the door, and said, "Tickets Please". An engineer stuck their only ticket under the door. The conductor took the ticket and left. A few minutes later, the engineers emerged from the bathroom. The math majors felt really stupid.
  
  On the way back from the convention, the group of math majors had ONE ticket for their group. They started snickering at the engineers, who had NO tickets amongst them.
  
  When the engineer lookout shouted, "Conductor coming!", all the engineers again piled into a bathroom. All of the math majors went into another bathroom. Then, before the conductor came on board, one of the engineers left the bathroom, knocked on the other bathroom, and said, "Ticket please."

And with that, some more general engineering jokes:

• There are three engineers in a car: An electrical engineer, a chemical engineer and a computer engineer. Suddenly the car just stops by the side of the road, and the three engineers look at each other wondering what could be wrong.
  
  The electrical engineer suggests stripping down the electronics of the car and trying to trace where a fault might have occurred.
  
  The chemical engineer suggests that maybe the fuel is becoming emulsified and getting blocked somewhere.
  
  Then, the computer engineer suggests, "Look, why don't we close all the windows, get out, get back in, open the windows again, and maybe it'll work!"
• A pastor, a doctor and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers. The engineer fumed, "What's with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!" The doctor chimed in, "I don't know, but I've never seen such ineptitude!" The pastor said, "Hey, here comes the greens keeper. Let's have a word with him."
  
  "Hi George. Say, what's with that group ahead of us? They're rather slow, aren't they?" The greens keeper replied, "Oh, yes, that's a group of blind firefighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime."
  
  The group was silent for a moment. The pastor said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight." The doctor said, "Good idea. And I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there's anything he can do for them. "The engineer thought for a second and said, "Why can't these guys play at night?"
• A boy was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess." He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket.
  
  The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week." The boy took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to his pocket.
  
  The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want." Again the boy took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket.
  
  Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess, that I'll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?" The boy said, "Look I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that's cool!"
• Several scientists were all posed the following question: "What is two plus two?"
  
  The mathematician stares blankly at the interviewer for a second, then says "four."
  
  The engineer whips out his slide rule (so it's old) and shuffles it back and forth, and finally announces "3.99".
  
  The physicist consults his technical references, sets up the problem on his computer, and announces "it lies between 3.98 and 4.02".
  
  The philosopher cogitates for a while, then announces: "I don't know what the answer is, but I can tell you, an answer exists!".
  
  The Logician replies: "Please define two plus two more precisely."
  
  The sociologist: "I don't know, but isn't it nice talking about it?"
  
  The Medical Student says "4" All the others look at him astonished and say: "How did you know?" The Medical Student replies: "I memorized it."
  
  The economist looks at the interviewer cautiously, shuts the door, pulls down the shades, and whispers: "What would you like it to be?"
• Two bytes are sitting at a bar, and the first byte says to the second byte "Hey is something wrong with you?" and the second byte says "Yeah I have a parity error!" So the first byte says "Yeah, I thought you looked a bit off!
• An engineer, a physicist, and a computer scientist were discussing what was the oldest profession.
  
  The engineer claimed priority. "Look at all that matter engineered into amazing constructs like galaxies, stars, and planets."
  
  The physicist disagreed. "Before there were planets, the matter had to be made from chaos. Physics is responsible for all the quarks, gluons, photons, and electrons."
  
  The computer scientist coughed modestly. "Ah, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
• A doctor, a lawyer and an engineer were discussing the relative merits of having a wife or a mistress.
  
  The lawyer says: "For sure a mistress is better. If you have a wife and want a divorce, it causes all sorts of legal problems."
  
  The doctor says: "It's better to have a wife because the sense of security lowers your stress and is good for your health."
  
  The engineer says: "You're both wrong. It's best to have both so that the wife thinks you're with the mistress and the mistress thinks you're with your wife --- then you can sneak off to the lab and get some work done."

Updates:

• A mathematician is someone who has a knack for numbers, but just doesn't have the personality to be an accountant.
• The difference between an introvert and extrovert engineer is thus: An introvert engineer looks at his shoes while talking to you. An extrovert engineer looks at your shoes.
• The dean of a college was complaining about the difficulties in funding all the engineering departments. "Why do I always have to give you guys so much money, for laboratories and expensive equipment and stuff. Why couldn't you be like the math department - all they need is money for pencils, paper and waste-paper baskets. Or even better, like the philosophy department. All they need are pencils and paper."

Skill vs Luck

I like games. I enjoy playing them with other people, or just using them as an excuse to unwind. I also have a compulsive need to understand and categorize everything in my life, so to that end, here's a little classification I came up with for classifying games on a spectrum of skill vs luck.

On the one hand you have games that are Pure Luck. No strategic choices are made at any point, and an expert should win no more often than a complete newbie. Candy Land, Snakes and Ladders, and War are all "pure luck" games, where unless you cheat you're really just sitting back and watching the game unfold randomly. Playing War is low pressure since there's really nothing to be competitive about or strategies to worry over, and anyone can pick it up, follow the rules, and do equally well.

At the other end of the spectrum you have games that are Pure Skill. No random chance is involved, no dice rolling or drawing cards from a deck, and there's no uncertainty. Both players have an equal awareness of all the specifics of the game and a better player will almost always beat a worse one. Chess, Checkers, Go, and Othello are all examples of this type of game, and a lot of A.I. research has been invested in teaching computers to play them since they tend to map out the most logically, a fast enough computer could play any of these games perfectly, there's no unpredictable social aspects.

Coming from the other side of things, I'd think of Go Fish as a game that's about 10% Skill, 90% Luck. Most of how the game turns out comes down to the luck of the draw, although there is some memorization involved and you do have a choice of what cards to reveal to the other players. I'd say that's enough for a better player to win more often than average, but not by much.


Sorry! would be a game I'd think of as being closer to 20% Skill. The only choice you get to make is which piece to move when you have more than one out, and most of the time your options are pretty obvious, although not completely trivial. Similarly, Uno/Crazy Eight's and Masterpiece all take some basic strategy, but most of the game is in the luck of the draw and it's not at all unusual for a beginning player to master the game or win on their first try.


Above that, I'd put Monopoly, Careers, and Clue in the 30% Skill range. Most of your gameplay in Monopoly comes down to where you roll, the rest of it is about your tolerance for risk in where you put your money. There's some strategic trading in that game as in Careers. Clue is another game where you can play mostly on autopilot with a basic strategy, although it's possible to infer some of the evidence based upon what clues other people are shown.


I think of the basic trick-taking card games like Hearts, Spades, and Pitch as being in the 40% Skill range. A lot of the time your play is constrained by what suit is being led and you don't spend a lot of the time in control of where the game is going. There are some significant strategic choices however and while it's certainly possible to get lucky, skilled/experienced players would tend to win more often over the long run


Right smack dab in the middle of the spectrum I'd put Liar's Dice, Half Skill and Half Luck. With a large enough group of people there's some complex probabilities to keep track of as the game goes through its rounds, and it involves a lot of the same bluffing and social aspects as a good poker game. Anyone CAN win, but the better players tend to make it to the end pretty reliably.


Above Liar's Dice I'd place the class of board strategy games like Risk or Axis and Allies, with an arbitrary figure of 60% Skill. There's clearly a lot of strategic choices being made, even though a lot of it does come down to your tolerance for "risk". But so much of the game is social and depends upon the other player's willingness to avoid ganging up on you that it's hard to imagine it being used for serious tournament/competitive play.


Poker I'd place below the board strategy games, so I'll call it 70% Skill for now. It's clearly a game in which expert players can dominate weaker ones over the long run, but it's not a game in which the same players win the tournaments every year. After a certain level of play it seems to come down to the luck of the cards.


Bridge I think of in the 80% Skill range. It's the most heavily analyzed out of any of the games of chance, to the point where there are bridge columns in the newspaper. All of the players are aware of half of the cards during gameplay, meaning you're only guessing on a few variables as to how the cards are divided up. There's a fair amount of depth to the strategy in bidding too, and it seems to be quite complex for all its unpredictability.

Stratego is a game I'd consider to be about 90% Skill. While all the battles and movements are decided by non-randomly by the players themselves, neither player has full information about the pieces held by the other side. One player can certainly get lucky and strike down the correct path to find the flag early on or simply guess right about where his opponent is set up, but a skilled player still certainly has an edge almost all of the time. It ranks below the pure skill games just because the setup is unknown, but it still involves a heavy amount of strategy.


And there you have it. The more random a game is, the more your strategy becomes about weighing risk vs potential payoff rather than considering all possible outcomes, and the more you focus on anticipating and outguessing what other people will do. You can teach a computer to play Poker perfectly just by the numbers and going with the best odds, but you can't teach it to read people. Games of skill are predictable, just complex. Technically the outcome of a game of Chess can already be determined in advance if both players play perfectly. In Connect Four, for example, the first player can always win with a perfect strategy. It's just that most games of pure skill haven't been completely analyzed yet.

Oh, and just for fun, the graphic at the top is a classification of games by number of players, not sure what I'd want to do with it yet.

Movie Trilogies

Every movie trilogy can be classified into one of six types, depending upon how they all rank against each other in terms of quality.

• Trilogies of declining quality ( 1 > 2 > 3)
  This is usually typical of a series where the first movie stands on its own and makes a lot of money, then a few sequels are tacked on to play off of that. I'd think of the Matrix "Trilogy" in this category, Pirates of the Caribbean, probably Back to the Future as well.
• Trilogies with a strong first movie, and a weak middle movie(1 > 3 > 2)
  I think of the Mission Impossible movies in this category, the first movie was excellent, the second film was a Matrix/James Bond clone, and the third movie did a good job of getting the series back to its roots.
• Trilogies of increasing quality (3 > 2 > 1)
  This is the case when the moviemaking or general quality gets better as you go. Typically in trilogies with tacked on sequels the story tends to wear thin as the special effects get better, so this may be more rare. The prequel star wars trilogy seems to fit this pattern, although that may be a special case since it took them three movies to get to the plot. The man with no name trilogy is another possible contender (the good, the bad, and the ugly series)
• Trilogies with a strong third movie, and a weak second movie. (3 > 1 > 2)
  Another example of a weak middle chapter that made up for it later. The Indiana Jones trilogy (so far) fits this one for me, the temple of doom didn't have the same intrigue or significance as the other two, and the last crusade was simply great, you can't go wrong with both Sean Connery and Harrison Ford.
• Trilogies with a strong second movie, and a weak third movie (2 > 1 > 3)
  The original star wars trilogy is the classic example of this one, the empire strikes back fared the best critically and a lot of people think the series jumped the shark with the ewok-a-thon in Return of the Jedi, even if it is warm and fuzzy when you're a kid.
• Trilogies with a strong second movie, and a weak first movie (2 > 3 > 1)
  This one is even rarer, since it's not very often than the first title in a series is the weakest since that's usually the one to justify all the others. I think the x-men movies are a good candidate though, with adaptations from comic-books you have so much source material to draw from you can really make any number of movies before you get the right story, and the first film didn't do as good of a job with the characters as the other two.

I'm still somewhat undecided on how I'd rank the Lord of the Rings films or the Spiderman movies. My intuition is that for most trilogies the first movie is the best, although it may be different if the entire trilogy is conceived in advance, as in the case of Lord of the Rings, or if the trilogy is composed with a two part sequel, as in the case of Back to the Future, The Matrix, and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Update: Rottentomatoes (a site which aggregates ratings from actual critics) rates Spiderman, X-men, and the original Star Wars trilogy 2>1>3, LOTR and the Star Wars prequels 3>2>1, Back to the Future, Austin Powers and Indiana Jones 1>3>2, The Matrix and Pirates of the Caribbean and Spiderman 1>2>3, and Mission Impossible 3>1>2. Wasn't able to find any trilogies that were ranked 2>3>1.

Further Update: The Five Harry Potter movies so far are ranked 3>4>2>1>5, which is probably the order I would rank the first five books as well.

The most paranoid time of the year

When you're a kid, Christmas can be a very weird time. Most of us are raised to believe in a secret society of diminutive magical creatures ruled over by a pleasantly obese man in a red suit. These "elves" monitor our behavior year-round and annually pronounce judgment on us in the form of gifts ideally suited to our moral character. Rare are the stories of some kid having his stocking filled with coal or fossil fuels, but there's always the threat hanging over you that if you don't shape up you'll be the only kid without any candycanes to his name come December 26th.

Of course, everyone knew the system was rigged. The rich kids next door always wound up with the best stuff, even when you knew for a fact they hadn't been any less naughty than you all year. And no matter how much trouble your siblings got into on the days prior to Christmas, the fat man always seemed to come through for them.

As you start getting tall enough to peer over your pile of presents to see the strings being pulled from above, you begin to realize the real nature of the game. Christmas was invented to keep us in line. The one dimensional naughty-nice continuum turns out to be a philosophical fiction, just a way for the powers-that-be to get you staring over your own shoulder and policing yourself for once. And if the other kids don't catch up with you first, your parents just come right out and tell you that the flying caribou and sweatshop gremlins with whom you had this complex love/hate/fear relationship for years aren't even real. So you turn your back on the whole myth until it's time to repeat the cycle yourself and pass on the lie for another generation.

Or so they would have you believe. Despite decades of scientific progress and putting a man on the moon, there are corners of the North Pole left unexplored. Every year hundreds of thousands of children write letters to the man in red-- pouring out their hearts, baring their selfish little souls, and possibly dropping some dirt on the naughty habits of their peers. The end result is enough marketing data to predict the purchasing habits of the entire world, and a collection of secrets regarding the juvenile offenders of our globe that Big Brother could only dream about.

Ask yourself for a second exactly why you assume Santa isn't real. Thousands of agents with his exact likeness are spotted every year at department stores around the country. NASA claims to help direct him across the globe, and articles detailing his holiday plans slip unnoticed past the radar of most news junkies. The most exhaustive network of kid informants in the world report in to the north pole come Christmas time, and everyone still assumes it's all about charity. Who do you think picks up those royalty checks on all the merchandise, all the self-inflating giant Santas which float over people's lawns like jolly gargoyles and all the countless ornamental and ornamented facsimiles of the supposedly omniscient chimney climbing toy tycoon? The thing is, Christmas's real business isn't in gifts. The fat man deals in information. And he has more of it than you could possibly imagine.

The greatest trick Santa ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. And just like that, poof, he's gone.