Stop Me If You've Heard This Theorem Before
By Daniel S. Silver
There is mathematics in humor. Don’t laugh—or maybe do.
This Article From Issue
September-October 2020
Volume 108, Number 5
Page 306
Is there something funny about mathematics? To people who associate math with filing taxes and calculating tips, the answer is an easy “no.” To those of us who spend our lives immersed in numbers, the joke is on you: Without knowing it, you’ve been laughing at mathematical principles all along. Math is lurking in ordinary punch lines, comic strips, and television skits. Often it forms their foundation.
QUICK TAKE
- Math may not seem humorous, but many types of humor are inherently mathematical, grounded in mathlike rhythms, perceptual shifts, and logical contradictions.
- Bisociation, the intersection of two separate planes of thought, is the foundation of a punch line—but also of the equivalences used to establish mathematical proofs.
- The links between math and humor are more than superficial; math expresses ideas about logic and causality that define the way we understand (and laugh about) the world.
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