Maths jokes from Alexa, Google, and Princeton

When deciding which home assistant is best, a key test might be “OK Google/Alexa, tell me a maths joke”. (OK, your priorities may vary.) Alexa has a variety. Google has only one, and that is “How do you keep warm in a cold room? You go to the corner, because it’s always 90 degrees.”

Looking for more, I was pleased to find a stack of (warning: largely degree-level) maths jokes I didn’t know before, at the home page of L Shou

Example: “Why can’t you grow corn in ℤ/6ℤ? Because it’s not a field.” (The reader may recall that ℤ/\(n\)ℤ - i.e. arithmetic modulo \(n\) - is a field - i.e. has inverses for multiplication - if and only if \(n\) is prime.) “Why can’t you grow corn in ℤ/5ℤ? Because it’s an abstract mathematical object!” (Well.) Sadly I don’t know enough abstract algebra to get the followup “I hear Grothendieck once grew corn in ℤ/57ℤ, although he had to devise a clever scheme first.” (The reader will notice that 57 = 19 × 3, so is not prime - and although I don’t know what Grothendieck’s scheme might have been, some other readers might…)

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