An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician....

[nancylebov]

An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt already heard. After some observations and rough calculations the engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing. A few minutes later the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper.

This leaves the mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of humour from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.

From a rec.arts.sf.written post by kgbooklog/Konrad Gaertner.

Comments

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Oy.

Funny, but too long to fit on a button.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I was able to extract "I am not addicted to brake fluid. I can stop any time." from a normal-length anecdote, but this one is hopeless.

[thette.livejournal.com]

OTOH, "An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an anecdote..." works quite well by itself.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Do you know the one about Heisenberg, Goedel and Chomsky?

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

:) All too plausible. Heh.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

No, but I'd like to see it.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

This is rysmiel's joke.

Heisenberg, Goedel and Chomsky walk into a bar. Heisenberg says: "I'm not sure, but this might be some kind of joke."

Goedel says: "It could be a joke, but there's no way for us to tell from inside it whether it is or not, we need more information."

Chomsky says: "Of course it's a joke, you're just not telling it right!"

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

Just for the record, I didn't write it.

Years ago, I set up my computer to dual boot with FreeBSD, and that anecdote was in the fortune file (along with a ton of other great jokes). I've since lost the files, but I remembered that joke when someone mentioned humor researchers using anecdotal evidence, and so I Googled for it (you'd be amazed at the number of hits for "anecdote" and "derivative") and quoted it. AFAICT, no one knows who actually wrote it.

And just to bring things full circle, the page (http://users.characterlink.net/The-Cookie-Jar/math_jokes_02.html) I copied it from mentions a NancyButton.

[zenlizard]

That was just so...predictable.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I just *might* be able to squeeze that onto a button.