I POSSESSING A MATHEMATICAL MIND
Several old jokes common amongst the scientific disciplines illustrate the
difference between the mathematical mind and that of other disciplines. One goes as
follows:
An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician are all staying at a hotel one night
when a fire breaks out. The engineer wakes up and smells the smoke; he quickly
grabs a garbage pail to use as a bucket, fills it with water from the bathroom, and
puts out the fire in his room. He then refills the pail and douses everything
flammable in the room with water. He then goes back to sleep. The physicist wakes
up, smells the smoke, jumps out of bed. He picks up a pad and pencil and makes
some calculations, glancing frequently at the flames. He then measures exactly 15.6
liters of water into the garbage pail, and throws it on the flames, which are
extinguished. Smiling, he returns to sleep. Finally the mathematician wakes up. He
too grabs a pad and begins fervently writing, glancing at the flames, and then writing
more. After a while, he gets a satisfied look on his face; entering the bathroom, he
produces a match, lights it, and then extinguishes it with a bit of running water. "Aha!
A solution exists," he murmurs, and goes back to sleep.
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