That was funny

Up to the 1960s
A peasant sells a bag of potatoes for $10.
His costs amount to 4/5 of his selling price.
What is his profit?
In the early 1970s
A farmer sells a bag of potatoes for $10.
His costs amount to 4/5 of his selling price, i.e., $8.
What is his profit?
1970’s (new math)
A farmer exchanges a set P of [...]

1. I accidentally divided by zero and my paper burst into flames.
2. Isaac Newton’s birthday.
3. I could only get arbitrarily close to my textbook. I couldn’t
actually reach it.
4. [...]

Question: how many times can you subtract 7 from 83, and what is left afterwards?
Answer: I can subtract it as many times as I want, and it leaves 76 every time.

In the interest of historical accuracy let it be known that
…
1) Fibonacci’s daughter was not named “Bunny.”
2) Michael Rolle was not Danish, and did not call his
daughter “Tootsie.”
3) William Horner was not called “Little-Jack” by his
friends.
4) The “G” in G. Peano does not stand for “grand.”
5) Rene [...]

Q: Where do mathematicians go shopping?
a: At the decimall.

A student, working on a rather long math homework assignment,
discovered that one problem was fairly easy to solve, except that it
required about three pages of fairly simple proof after the one or two
difficult steps. It being rather late at night, he did the difficult
steps and left the proof undone, along with a note:
“This proof [...]

Two math professors are in a restaurant. One argues that the average person
does not know any math beyond high school. The other argues that the
average person knows some more advanced math. Just then, the first one gets
up to use the rest room. The second professor calls over his waitress and
says, “When you bring our food, [...]

A small, 14-seat plane is circling for a landing in Atlanta. It’s
totally fogged in, zero visibility, and suddenly there’s a small
electrical fire in the cockpit which disables all of the instruments
and the radio. The pilot continues circling, totally lost, when
suddenly he finds himself flying next to a tall office building.
He rolls down the [...]

My wife was at one of the math parties, getting rather bored.
A friend of mind explained to her that there was one conversation
line that always worked with professors. Just say
“Standards are falling.”
Another professor overheard this, and turned around to say that
this was absolutely true, and we spent the next half hour
complaining about how standards [...]

A question is asked to CS department students. The question is: What is
the value of `2*2′?
(1st year student): says `4′, without any thinking.
(2nd year student): says `4, exactly’, after a moment of thinking.
(3rd year student): takes a pocket calculator, presses some buttons and
says `4′.
(4th year student): writes a program of about 100 lines, debugs [...]