tl;dr: They were down there talking about math one afternoon and the owner of the deli was trying to take the order from one of them and he was a little bit too preoccupied with mathematics to fully engage in the sandwich ordering process.
I think it's a little funnier than your tl;dr: in particular, a member of the math faculty, who has a sandwich named after him and who is friends with the owner, was a little bit too preoccupied with mathematics to fully engage with the sandwich ordering process.
For what real values of i does the sum of ε^i, taken ε=1 to infinity, converge?
Our real analysis lecturer once put this question on the blackboard (with sum as the proper scientific sum notation).
Even though we all knew the answer as trivial it took most of us some time to figure it out in such screwy notation (his point was that our mind is not invariant WRT notation, do not make up monsters when the normal schemas exist)
In 2005, which had a very bad hurricane season in the Atlantic, (that was the year of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma) they ran out of names for hurricanes and had to use Greek letters. The last hurricane of the season was called Epsilon. Due to my mathematical training I found it very hard to be scared of it.
A bit less concise but still my favorite: An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar (which I already think is funny) and the first orders a pint of ale, the second orders a half pint, the third orders a quarter pint. After this goes on for a bit the bartender looks disgusted, slams two pints on the counter and says "You mathematicians really have to get to know your limits!"
Mathematicians can have a focus (and corresponding lack of real-world awareness) that puts even us engineers to shame. Once as an undergrad I was taking a class in the math building, and there was a professor blocking the door because he was reading a flyer taped to it about an upcoming symposium or something. I coughed a little to indicate I was there, and he turned, acknowledged my presence, and then went right back to reading the flyer for another fifteen seconds or so.
There's the classic/apocryphal story as well of the student who stops a math professor in the hallway and asks a complicated question. Professor gives a long, thorough answer, and the student becomes enlightened. Just as the student is about to leave, the professor asks "Wait, which way did I come from?" Student points out "That way", and the professor goes "Great, then I've had lunch."
Does anyone remember the story about the famous mathematician at (I think) Princeton, who would always pick 3 as a random number in his examples. ("Let's pick a random number, say 3...")
And then he ended up mentoring an entire generation of mathematicians who adopted his habit.
And everyone would always "randomly" pick 3. It became a thing.
It's kind of a variant on the "let L be a group" because the joke relies entirely on the social conventions of a small group of people.
XKCD 221 came out February 9th, 2007[1], so either Randall new about the bug before details were announced in May 2008, or it's just a joke about randomness not tied to any particular reference.
[1] Go to https://xkcd.com/archive/, hover over the title of a comic, and a tooltip will show the date
My favorite math joke, imagine a professor speaking: "I explained it in my seminar, but they didn't seem to understand. So, I had to explain it again, and again they didn't get it. I ended up explaining it a third time, and by that point I understood it, but they still didn't understand.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadThe sign is humorous, but the article is entirely too long for the subject.
I actually guffawed at that one. I am SO going to use that.
The equivalent programmer joke might be something like "int str;" or "string array_length;"
It's kind of funny in the "oh that's a really bad joke" kind of way :)
Or a similar but more blatant telling of the original joke would be "Let ℵ₀ be a group."
I teach basic Maths to adults in the UK, so I tend to use these old faves...
"What did the zero say to the eight?"
"Nice belt"
(even my sister has heard that one)
"Why does noone talk to circles?"
"There's no point"
Thankyou and goodnight
Because seven eight nine.
Never grep a yacc by the inode.
Our real analysis lecturer once put this question on the blackboard (with sum as the proper scientific sum notation).
Even though we all knew the answer as trivial it took most of us some time to figure it out in such screwy notation (his point was that our mind is not invariant WRT notation, do not make up monsters when the normal schemas exist)
Because then we can just let L be a Lie(ing) group :)
We love you, you crazy bastards.
"I have 2 moneys" doesn't make sense, so you use "less money."
"I have 2 points" does make sense, so you use "fewer points."
"Fewer rational numbers" works, but "less real numbers" sounds funny.
Might be my own ignorance, might be my teachers growing up using trainwrecks like "yous" and "alls."
And then he ended up mentoring an entire generation of mathematicians who adopted his habit.
And everyone would always "randomly" pick 3. It became a thing.
It's kind of a variant on the "let L be a group" because the joke relies entirely on the social conventions of a small group of people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generator_attack...
I'm fairly sure this basic joke predates xkcd by quite a while. For example, here's a Dilbert comic from 2001 with a slight variation on it:
http://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25
This Jargon File entry listing several specific "random numbers" has the same theme:
http://catb.org/jargon/html/R/random-numbers.html
[1] Go to https://xkcd.com/archive/, hover over the title of a comic, and a tooltip will show the date
EDIT: I see 'mikeash beat me to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57_(number)#In_mathematics
"What's purple and commutes?" "An abelian grape"
"What's yellow and equivalent to the axiom of choice?" "Zorn's Lemon"
Evidently there's something inherently funny about group theory.
Many more jokes of varies quality: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/1083/do-good-math-jokes-e...
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/1083/do-good-math-jokes-e...
For any epsilon less than zero .....