A mathematician and a non-mathematician are sitting in an airport hall waiting for their flight to go. The non has terrible flight panic.

“Hey, don’t worry, it’s just every 10000th flight that crashes.”

“1:10000? So much? Then it surely will be mine!”

“Well, there is an easy way out. Simply take the next plane. It’s much more probable that you go from a crashing to a non-crashing plane than the other way round. So you are already at 1:10000 squared.”

Two statisticians were travelling in an airplane from LA to New York. About an hour into the flight, the pilot announced that they had lost an engine, but don’t worry, there are three left.

However, instead of 5 hours it would take 7 hours to get to New York. A little later, he announced that a second engine failed, and they still had two left, but it would take 10 hours to get to New York.

Somewhat later, the pilot again came on the intercom and announced that a third engine had died. Never fear, he announced, because the plane could fly on a single engine.

However, it would now take 18 hours to get to new York. At this point, one statistician turned to the other and said, “Gee, I hope we don’t lose that last engine, or we’ll be up here forever!”

“Psst, c’mere,” said the shifty-eyed man wearing a long black trenchcoat, as he beckoned me off the rainy street into a damp dark alley. I followed.

“What are you selling?” I asked.

“Geometrical algebra drugs.”

“Huh!?”

“Geometry drugs. Ya got your uppers, your downers, your sidewaysers, your inside-outers…”

“Stop right there,” I interrupted. “I’ve never heard of inside-outers.”

“Oh, man, you’ll love ‘em. Makes you feel like M.C. ever-lovin’ Escher on a particularly weird day.”

“Go on…”

“OK, your inside-outers, your arbitrary bilinear mappers, and here, heh, here are the best ones,” he said, pulling out a large clear bottle of orange pills.

“What are those, then?” I asked.

“Givens transformers. They’ll rotate you about more planes than you even knew existed.”

“Sounds gross. What about those bilinear mappers?”

“There’s a whole variety of them. Here’s one you’ll love — they call it ‘One Over Z’ on the street. Take one of these little bad boys and you’ll be on speaking terms with the Point of Infinity.”

1. Ten percent of all car thieves are left-handed
2. All polar bears are left-handed
3. If your car is stolen, there’s a 10 percent chance it was taken by a Polar bear

1. 39 percent of unemployed men wear spectacles
2. 80 percent of employed men wear spectacles
3. Work stuffs up your eyesight

1. All dogs are animals
2. All cats are animals
3. Therefore, all dogs are cats

1. A total of 4000 cans are opened around the world every second
2. Ten babies are conceived around the world every second
3. Each time you open a can, you stand a 1 in 400 chance of becoming pregnant

Prove that the crocodile is longer than it is wide.

Lemma 1. The crocodile is longer than it is green: Let’s look at the crocodile. It is long on the top and on the bottom, but it is green only on the top. Therefore, the crocodile is longer than it is green.

Lemma 2. The crocodile is greener than it is wide: Let’s look at the crocodile. It is green along its length and width, but it is wide only along its width. Therefore, the crocodile is greener than it is wide.

From Lemma 1 and Lemma 2 we conclude that the crocodile is longer than it is wide.