It can safely be said that jokes and satire are often the most condensed characterisation of a person, profession or political group.

The same goes for mathematicians – the majority of the populace hold the belief they themselves are not particularly good at maths (or even loathe it) and that the way mathematicians think is especially hard to understand.

We’ll try and take the jocular approach and have tried to collect a few jokes that highlight certain features of the mathematical profession and sometimes we add a comment as to what specific epistemological issue this joke alludes to. And as with all things mathematical, there is of course a theoretical approach to math jokes …

An astronomer, a physicist and a mathematician (it is said) were holidaying in Scotland. Glancing from a train window, they observed a black sheep in the middle of a field.

“How interesting,” observed the astronomer, “all Scottish sheep are black!”

To which the physicist responded, “No, no! Some Scottish sheep are black!”

The mathematician gazed heavenward in supplication, and then intoned, “In Scotland there exists at least one field, containing at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black. Read the rest of this entry »

While humankind developed the faculty of speech probably hundreds of thousands of years ago, complex mathematical thinking seems to have been an afterthought of human development. It seems that the concept of numbers as discrete entities on which certain specifically arithmetical operations can be performed is not older than eight thousand years, symbolic calculus and mathematical proof (esp. in geometry) date back only about two and a half thousand years in ancient Greece, differential calculus is about 400 years old, negative numbers were consciously introduced into mathematics in the eighteenth century and abstract algebraic concepts date back less than 200 years. In other words, high school level math is on a level that maybe two hundred years ago a university professor would not have mastered while linguistic and rhetoric abilities were certainly always superior in adults of any age than in children or teenagers. Read the rest of this entry »

This site will bring to you information on the training of children (or adults who like our methods) in arithmetics and from there on mathematics in general. Learning to count, then to calculate and later to grasp more complex mathematical constructs takes time. To some children it seems to come just naturally, but many others abhor the whole subject of mathematics for the rest of their lives.  This need not be.  Mathematics can be great fun and it is this fun we want to bring back to you should you somehow lost it or make sure your child never loses while it still has a chance.

Watch future posts on this blog regarding all aspects of mathematics that we’ll eventually cover. For today, just consider this:

About 75% of all arithmetic you need later in life is simple additions, maybe 20% subtractions, then very little multiplications while the times you need to really divide any larger numbers is negligible in comparison. This leads to two simultaneous conclusions: you should be a good adder to master everyday mathematical requirements but you also ought to master those calculations that you rarely need.  It’s like when you’re driving: you need to know about the accelerator, the steering wheel etc., in short you need to be able to at least navigate your car. But from time to time you need to check the oil, the brake fluid etc., even if you normally let someone else check on these. You most certainly should know that mixing the two up could be life-threatening or at least damage your engine. Certainly you need to be able to refill the windscreen washer system by yourself if necessary or check the tyres and be able to (re)inflate them. And you need to be able to sense if something’s awry even if you’re not able to finally diagnose it, much less repair it, right? Read the rest of this entry »

ViaRegia Math is a interactive math learn page where beginners can practice simple arithmetics.