From Normand Baillargeon’s blog:
Quelle est la différence entre un mathématicien et un philosophe ? Le mathématicien peut travailler avec seulement un stylo, un papier et une poubelle; le philosophe croit pouvoir se passer de la poubelle.
June 6, 2009
Oldie but a goodie
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Figments of a lack of imagination
An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician were captured by an evildoer, imprisoned in cells with only a whiteboard, whiteboard pens, and a stack of canned goods containing sufficient food and water to survive. The evildoer left the three for three months, then came back to see if any of them had lived.
The engineer was alive, barely. The whiteboard was a mess of scribbles. The engineer’s cell was smeared with food and water where the cans had been bashed open to get at the contents.
The physicist was alive. The whiteboard was full of equations. Each can had been opened with a tiny cut at the top, and the contents carefully removed.
The mathematician was dead. On the whiteboard was an unfinished proof that content can be moved outside its container through a topological deformation in n-space.
Comment by Mark — June 6, 2009 @ 7:40 am