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An Engineer, a physicist and a mathematician go into a building and discover that in one of the rooms there's a fire.

The Engineer grabs a fire extinguisher and sprays out the fire and it's taken care of.

The physicists grabs his calculator, makes a bunch of calculations and then grabs a bucket of water that's right there and pours just enough water to put the fire out.

The mathematician also whips out his calculator and after doing his computations also pours just enough water from the bucket to extinguish the fire.

So how do we tell the physicist from the mathematician?

Well they're taken to another room just like the first and told that the bucket of water is in the closet. A similar fire is in the middle of this room too.

The physicists goes to the closet, grabs the water and pours out the amount needed to put out the fire and thus extinguishes it.

The mathematician goes to the closet, grabs the water, sets it down by the fire and says, "Reduced to previous problem solved," and leaves.

I don't get the last bit.

Since the mathematican has in effect 'solved' the first fire, he makes the second one the same, so it is 'solved as well', but you don't have to do the same working out as well.


A (possibly) helpful analogy:

Say the first fire represents 2x = 4
Putting out the fire is in effect working out x = 2

With the last bit, the scenario represents 2x + 2 = 6
My moving the bucket, it becomes 2x = 4
i.e. the mathematician makes the second problem one has has already solved, so he knows the answer from that.


See!? By explaining the joke, I have just removed what little humerous merit it contained.

nice....very funny

The first time I heard this it was: what's the difference between an applied mathematician and a theoretical mathematician?

An applied mathematician wakes up, realizes there is a fire in the room, fills the waste basket with water, and puts out the fire.

A theoretical mathematician wakes up, realizes there is a fire in the room, sees there is a waste basket, turns on the tap and watches the water run, turns off the water, and returns to bed satisfied that a solution to the problem exists.

smile