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| Participants from left: Gina Stuessy, Ben West, Ronak Mehta, Josh Jacobson, Michael Schirle, Jen Birstler, Mark Yerrington |
The 2017 Madison math Joke/vegan potluck competition (hosted by Health eFilings) was a great success. Participants competed in six categories:
- Best pickup line
- Best pun
- Best easily understood joke
- Best song/poem/artistic presentation
- Best under proclaim rules (one person should find the joke funny, but after that as few people as possible should find it funny)
- Best composite food + joke score
Pun
Ronak
A frequentist was arrested for trying to use the sample mean as a robust estimator, but got off because they had no priors!
Ben (winner)
The case history of Mr. A Triangle, presented by the staff of Gray-Sloan Memorial Hospital
Mr. A Triangle presented to urgent care with pain in his neck. Due to the acute nature of his case, he was immediately transferred to the ER. Unfortunately, the ER had an unusually high patient volume that day, with a long line stretching out the door. Due to the obtuseness of Dr Doug Ross, the staff failed to notice parallels between his case and others.
A Triangle's neck pain was originally diagnosed as a tear in the rhomboids muscles or perhaps the trapezius, but a full patient history revealed A Triangles isosceles nature and attention shifted to the scalene and deltoid muscles.
Fortunately, Dr Meredith Gray happened to be walking by, and she noticed that A Triangles internal angles did not sum to 180°. Further investigation revealed that the patient had been exercising on an elliptical machine.
Internal angle misalignment due to elliptical surfaces is such a rare condition that it was not even recognized until its description in the mid-1800s by Dr János Bolyai. A Triangle was known for hyperbolic statements, to such an extent that some even considered him to be a lune, but eventually the staff was convinced that he needed to be transferred via medevac plane to the symmetry ward.
Dr Callie Torres was the intern in charge of patient intake on the symmetry ward that day. It was her third rotation after having received her MD and, since she specialized in triangular medicine, the third rotation was her final one. Callie was sometimes jealous of her colleagues in other specialties who had more rotations available, particularly those who could glide right through medical school, but upon reflection she felt she had made the right choice: her colleagues in the tiling specialties consistently had to deal with translators, after all.
Dr Torres brought A Triangles case history to the group, but the group was tense due to unresolved issues between Dr Torres and her former love interest Dr O'Malley. Dr Torres had told Dr O'Malley that, while their relationship was solid, it was purely platonic and, since the hospital already had five solid platonic relationships, the other staff members had trouble distinguishing this one.
The group recommended an angular bisection to return A Triangles scalene muscle to normal shape, but Dr Torres had attended a Greek school and was therefore more familiar with dissection than bisection. The patient was referred to Dr Derek Shepherd, who discovered that the disease vectors were still unknown, despite treatment guidelines requiring a known determinant. Dr Shepherd wished to discover the vector product, but as he had lost the use of his arms in an airplane accident he could not apply the right hand rule.
A Triangle was therefore sent to surgery under the supervision of Dr Maranda Bailey, who immediately determined that not a bisection but a trisection was called for. Unfortunately, upon administration of anesthesia A Triangle began to code, and only a ruler and compass were available. As trisection was impossible, Dr Bailey proceeded with successive bisection.
A Triangle was discharged two days later, with a small angular irregularity. As the difference from a true trisection was arbitrarily small, we feel that discussion of any differences is nonconstructive and irrational.
Easily Understood
Ben and Gina (winner)
Abbott and Costello do linear algebra
[On phone]
Izzy: Hello?
Ben: Hey Izzy!
Izzy: Hey, what’s up? You excited for the baseball season this year?
Ben: Yeah, that’s why I was calling… do you know who our coach is?
Izzy: Yeah, I think it’s Miss Gina, the math teacher?
Ben: Oh, okay. I had thought it was Mr. Gomez!
Izzy: No, I’m pretty sure it’s Miss Gina.
Ben: Okay, the math teacher. I’ll go find her because I have some questions.
Ben: Miss Gina?
Gnia: Yes Ben?
Ben: I was wondering if I could ask you about the bases?
Gina: Aye, certainly.
Ben: Could you tell me third base?
Gina: K
Ben: Well, go ahead...
Gina: Look, you are in a three-dimensional space right?
Ben: Sure…
Gina: All right, then you have three basis units, and the third one is K
Ben: No, not basis, bases
Gina: Fine, you have three bases, and the third one is K
Ben: K?
Gina: Third-base!
Ben: No, like in baseball you have these different bases...
Gina: It doesn't matter whether you have a ball or something else, the bases are still the same.
Ben: But if you have a baseball diamond…
Gina: Look, you can have a ball, or a diamond, or any shape that you want, but a linear
transformation will bring the third base back to K.
Ben: Fine, then do you know first base?
Gina: I
Ben: Okay, will you tell me?
Gina: I!
Ben: Go ahead and tell me, then!
Gina: Aye, I said I!
Ben: K…
Gina: Third-base!
Ben: Oh, so can you tell me third base?
Gina: K.
Ben: Look, it seems improbable to me that you don't understand what I mean by base.
Gina: Oh, improbable. Bayes… You mean like Thomas Bayes?
Ben: Is Thomas a base?
Gina: Well, sure. Thomas Bayes.
Ben: Thomas base?
Gina: Thomas Bayes.
Ben: Oh great, Thomas base! What base is he?
Gina: I'm not sure. I assume he was at least the second Bayes after his father… It's a pretty common
name...
Ben: So he's the second base?
Gina: I mean, I'm not sure how many Bayes there have been. I would guess that he's at least the
second, but he could be the third Bayes.
Ben: So he’s third base?
Gina: Third-base?
Ben: Yeah.
Gina: K.
Ben: K?
Gina: K.
Ben: I'm asking about third base
Gina: Aye
Ben: I?
Gina: First base.
Ben: First base?
Gina: I.
Ben: K…
Gina: Third-base!
Ronak
How many Mobius strips does it take to change a lightbulb?
None, a baby doesn’t wear lightbulbs!
Songs/Poem/artistic presentation
Unbiased Estimation - Jen (winner)
When we met, I was on a drunkard’s walk.
With the Markov chains on my wrists, I was a slave to repeat my mistakes almost surely.
I didn’t know what to expect - my life was highly variable until you normalized these Cauchy curves.
Now, everyday I know what to expect - it’s mu.
At our first moment, we integrated and at our second moment, we integrated again.
These moments have such high value to me, I naturally log all of them in this poem to you.
I used to think I was bounded but you showed me life has no limits.
You told me I’d cross positive determinants that would help me solve this system.
I knew your predictions were credible, even prior to our conjugation.
We’ll always be each other's Bayes.
My maximum likelihood is your posterior.
It’s okay that your p-value is small, you’re still significant to me.
Honestly, though, it’s sufficiently large.
Limerick #1 - Ronak
There once was a number named pi,
Who thought fractions could only be lies,
For such is the case,
In the real metric space,
That irrationals are dense on the line!
Limerick #2 - Ronak
There once was a sequence for me,
That was about a third less than a three,
But over the limit,
Five-thirds it did summit,
For their value approached that of an e!
Proclaim Rules
Ben (winner)
As a young man, Abraham Lincoln worked as a rail splitter. He was notoriously thrifty, and therefore purchased the smallest plot of land which would allow him to split rails: a rail splitting field.
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