Math Limericks

"I have found a proof
Of Fermat's conjecture, but
Haiku is too short."
-Jim Propp

Physics limericks are still the best, but math ain't so bad either....

Unless credited, all limericks are anonymously authored to the best of my knowledge. Corrections and additions are welcomed.

Nifty Numbers

'Tis a favorite project of mine
A new value of pi to assign.
I would fix it at 3
For it's simpler, you see,
Than 3 point 1 4 1 5 9.
-Harvey L. Carter

I used to think math was no fun,
'Cause I couldn't see how it was done.
Now Euler's my hero,
For I now see why 0
Equals e to the i pi plus 1.

There once was a number pi
Very special like e and phi
Circumference to d
Is the ratio for me
And it's not a multiple of i
-Liz Landau

There once was a number named e
Who took way too much LSD.
She thought she was great.
But that fact we must debate;
We know she wasn't greater than 3.
-Eve Andersson

e raised to the pi times i,
And plus 1 leaves you nought but a sigh.
This fact amazed Euler
That genius toiler,
And still gives us pause, bye the bye.

One over point one-oh-two-three,
When raised to the second degree,
Divided by seven
Then minus eleven
Is approximately equal to e.
-A.F. Cooper

A graduate student from Trinity
Computed the cube of infinity;
But it gave him the fidgets
To write down all those digits,
So he dropped math and took up divinity.

If (1 + x) (real close to 1)
Is raised to the power of 1
Over x, you will find
Here's the value defined:
2.718281...

There was an old man who said, "Do
Tell me how I should add two and two.
I think more and more
That it makes about four --
But I fear that is almost too few."

The Professor said, "Now I'll tell you
A fact known to only a few
Men and women alive.
Two plus two equals five!
For large enough values of two."
-Donald E. Simanek

Mathematics: of sciences, queen
Has more rules than I've ever seen.
There are no exceptions,
Just number deceptions.
On calculators, I am quite keen.

The square root of minus 2 pi
On th'square root of inverse sine phi;
All that need be done
Is let phi equal one:
It's twice exp of i pi on i.
-Andrew Adams

'Cause phi-squared less phi, minus 1,
Is exactly equal to none,
The golden mean phi,
Which so pleases the eye,
Is half of root 5 add on one. -M.M. Bishop

Calculus

A calc student upset as could be
That his antiderivative didn't agree
With the one in the book
E'en aft one more look.
Oh! Seems he forgot to write the "+ C".

Integral z-squared dz
From 1 to the cube root of 3
Times the cosine
Of three pi over 9
Equals log of the cube root of e.

The integral from e-squared to e
Of 1 over v dot dv,
When raised to the prime
Between five and nine,
Is e to the i pi by 3.
-M.M. Bishop

The integral from naught to pi
Of sine-squared of 2 phi d-phi,
When doubled and then
Not altered again,
Is log (minus 1) over i.
-M.M. Bishop

Analysis

Let there be two manifolds
And some points where their map does not hold,
A theorem of Sard,
Whose proof is not hard,
Says this set has no measure. Behold!
-Travis Maron

To find Euler's Gamma of three,
Integrate to infinity
from zero, dx
x-squared on exp(x),
Or three bang divided by three.
-M.M. Bishop

A Useful "Proof"

If A equals B (so I say),
And we multiply both sides by A,
Then we'll see that A squared,
When with AB compared,
Are the same. Remove B squared. Okay?

Both sides we will factorize. See?
Now each side contains A minus B.
We'll divide through by A
Minus B, and ole!
A plus B equals B. Oh whoopee!

But since I said A equals B,
B plus B equals B, you'll agree?
So if B equals one,
Then this sum I have done,
Proves that two equals one. Q.E.D.

In non-poetic form:
A = B
A² = AB
A² - B² = AB - B²
(A - B)(A + B) = B(A - B)
A + B = B
B + B = B
Let B = 1
2 = 1 (!)

Geometry

Pythagoras had a good ruse
With a rule just for triangles to use
"Add the squares of each side,"
He said with some pride,
"That's the square of the hypotenuse!"
-Lucy Blades

When you cut Apollonius' cone
There's a circle, but it's not alone.
A parabola, new,
A hyperbola, too,
And a perfect ellipse will be shown.
-Montgomery Phister

A conjecture both deep and profound
Is whether the circle is round.
In a paper of Erdos
Written in Kurdish
A counterexample is found.

A triangle's sides a, b, c,
With a vertex of 90 degrees,
If that vertext be
'Tween sides a and b,
The root a-squared plus b-squared is c.
-Andrew Adams

If inside a circle a line
Hits the center and goes spine to spine
And the line's length is d
the circumference will be
d times 3.14159....

Topology

A mathematician confided
That the Mobius band is one-sided
And you'll get quite a laugh
If you cut one in half
'Cause it stays in one piece when divided.

A mathematician named Klein
Thought the Mobius band was divine
Said he: If you glue
The edges of two
You'll get a weird bottle like mine.

The Mobius strip is a pain,
When you cut it again and again,
But if you should wedge
A large disk round the edge
Then you just get a projective plane.

If you have a cross-cap on your sphere,
And you give it a circle-shaped tear,
Then just shake it about
And untangle it out
And a Mobius strip will appear!

A burleyque dancer, a pip
Named Virginia, could peel in a zip;
But she read science fiction
and died of constriction
Attempting a Moebius strip.
-Cyril Kornbluth

There was young maiden named List
Whose mouth had a funny half-twist.
She'd turned both her lips
Into Moebius strips...
'Til she's kissed you, you haven't been kissed!

In finite dimensional space,
A curve on a sphere we will trace,
That's compact and smooth,
And we try to prove
It can shrink into any one place.
-Travis Maron

A student confused by topology,
Decided to switch to biology.
"While studying cells,"
The story he tells,
"I invented a new cohomology."

Algebra

Null vectors have zero projection.
So you ask, "What can be their direction?"
They point any which way.
"That's magic!" you say?
Not really; it's just misdirection.
-Donald E. Simanek

We are given a basis in E
And a new basis we want to be,
The inverse transpose
Is what we propose
Is a basis of it's dual space, we see!
-Travis Maron

Probability

Pascal, though he had no bad vices,
He did play a lot with his dice(s).
One day he was struck,
That good fortune and luck,
Could succumb to mathematical devices.

Number Theory

Fermat solved a problem with ease,
That most of us find quite a tease.
His margin so small,
Left no room at all,
For a proof as concise as you please.

A challenge for many long ages
Had baffled the savants and sages.
Yet at last came the light:
Seems old Fermat was right--
To the margin add 200 pages.
-P. Chernoff

In arctic and tropical climes,
the integers, addition, and times,
taken* will yield
a full finite field,
as p ranges over the primes.
[*] (mod p)

(On Euclid's algorithm for finding GCDs:)
If one of the numbers is nought,
Then the other's the value you sought.
Else deduct from the bigger
The lesser figure,
And pretend this pair's what you got.

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