# Science Jokes

[ See the jokes | Collecting the jokes | Jokes statistics | Website statistics | Selecting some Science Jokes ]

## About the Science Jokes Collection

I maintain the science jokes collection. Besides this page, there is also a history of the science jokes.

### O, you wish to see the jokes.

There are several possibilities:

- I post the new jokes every other month in rec.humor. I used to post all the jokes till half 1997 but the list became much too long.
- There is WWW version
  - Netherlands
- You can also get the whole file (540k zipped) from ftp-sites
  - Engeland in zip format
    If you wish to unzip the file in a unix environment, you must use `unzip -aa scijokes.zip` to prevent ^M's at the end of lines.
  - The latest ASCII version in zip format with a WWW protocol right here
  - an very old version in .Z format from the humor ftp site from Nathan Mates.
- You can also mail me.

If you wish to make your own mirror, you can send me a mail. This means updating your site every week, but with the right script, this only takes 5 minutes.

### Collecting all that is lots of work.

I must :-) read the following newsgroups:

- Humor groups:
  - rec.humor
  - rec.humor.funny
  - eunet.jokes
  - alt.humor.puns
  - alt.jokes.limericks
  - alt.quotations (Sometimes humor)
- Science groups:
  - sci.mat
  - sci.physics
  - sci.chem
  - sci.bio.misc
  - sci.misc

I have automated this a bit with a filter for DejaNews, but that is not as much fun.
Other sources:

- Humor books
- Quotation books
- Humans in the flesh
- Email from people like you

### Statistics of Science Jokes Collection

#### Version 7.41.3 Time-stamp: "March 20, 2004"

Number of entries in a section
Section | Jokes | Lines | Lines/Joke
--- | --- | --- | ---
Introduction | 0 | 154 | 0.00
=1. MATHEMATICS | 604 | 10964 | 18.15
=2. PHYSICS | 638 | 14701 | 23.04
=3. CHEMISTRY | 211 | 4798 | 22.74
=4. BIOLOGY | 221 | 4152 | 18.79
=5. EARTH SCIENCES | 70 | 1437 | 20.53
=6. THE MATHEMATICIAN, THE PHYSICIST AND THE ENGINEER (AND OTHERS) | 68 | 1340 | 19.71
=7. COMBINED SCIENCES | 87 | 4855 | 55.80
=8. ACADEMIC LIFE | 276 | 9050 | 32.79
=9. MISCELLANY | 214 | 4520 | 21.12
=10. ANECDOTES ABOUT FAMOUS SCIENTISTS | 81 | 1349 | 16.65
=11. MNEMONICS | 123 | 2899 | 23.57
=12. PRANKS AND ACCIDENTS | 86 | 2675 | 31.10
=13. SOURCES OF SCIENCE HUMOR ON AND OFF THE NET | 116 | 1074 | 31.10
TOTAL | 2795 | 63968 | 22.89

If this looks like nonsense you could look at a preformatted table.

Number of jokes in every category
Jokes including: | Number: |
--- | --- | ---
mathematics | 787
physics | 835
chemistry | 336
biology | 319
engineering | 89
computer science | 29

New jokes since last posting (February 28, 2004) : 14
Changed jokes since last posting (February 28, 2004) : 0

If you like to calculate the statistics for your own downloaded file, you can use the awk-script jokes.awk, which gives you the information, you see here. If you also wish to see the statistics for the subsections, you can use the script jokesub.awk.

### Website statistics of Nov 1998

The statistics as generated by XS4all are a bit difficult to follow, as only the filename and not the title of a page is mentioned. In december 1998, I organized it in a way to be able to understand what was happening on the site. Here is the hit list of November 1998 in the order of the sections with some conclusions.

#### List of hit pages

Number of hits for all sections
Section | visitors
--- | ---
mathematics - general | 631
mathematics - proofs | 361
mathematics - statistics and statisticians | 207
mathematics - mathematicians | 214
mathematics - poetry | 182
mathematics - quotes | 167
mathematics - puns | 272
physics - general | 565
physics - poetry | 269
physics - quotes | 272
physics - puns | 355
chemistry - general | 1191
chemistry - poetry | 452
chemistry - quotes | 385
chemistry - puns | 672
biology - general | 359
biology - poetry | 257
biology - quotes | 263
biology - puns | 393
other sciences | 150
the mathematician, the physicist and the engineer (and others) | 186
combined sciences | 116
academic life - general | 133
academic life - rules for research | 180
academic life - rules for writing an article | 100
miscellany - general | 54
miscellany - poetry | 55
miscellany - quotes | 87
anecdotes about famous scientists | 159
mnemonics - intro | 179
mnemonics - mnemonics | 153
mnemonics - mathematics | 181
mnemonics - computer science | 113
mnemonics - physics and astronomy | 163
mnemonics - chemistry | 280
mnemonics - biology and medicine | 227
mnemonics - miscellany | 123
pranks | 617
sources of science humor on and off the net | 177

Number of hits for special cases
Section | visitors
--- | ---
main page | 5158
zipfile of list | 292
new jokes | 263
Humorous science poetry | 8
Humorous science quote | 18
meaningless picture on main page | 4433

What conclusions can we draw from this? Chemistry is by far the most popular, followed by mathematics, pranks and physics. This is a far different order than the number of jokes, which is mathematics, physics and then chemistry with pranks far behind. In the mnemonics section the order is a bit different. Chemistry again on top, followed by biology. Physics and mathematics lie behind that. So mathematicians like to make jokes and chemists like to read them. And apparently lots of people like pranks. ;-)

Sections with general names have few hits - miscellany at the bottom, above that combined sciences and other sciences. Maybe I should make new sections for jokes from these sections.

Two of my favourite sections, "the mathematician, the physicist and the engineer" and the anecdotes are not much above that.

5% percent of the visitors downloads the zipfile to read the jokes offline or put them on their webpage (Yes, I noticed! ;-) and do not mind)

Also about 5% reads the new jokes, regular visitors I guess.

The picture entry is there to show that 14% of the visitors of this site uses a browser without pictures or with pictures off. Just a hint to site builders.

#### Actions

As a result of these measurements I created the new section Earth Sciences for geology and such and 25 new subsections for mathematics, physics, academic life and miscellany to make it easier to select a subject.

### Selecting some Science Jokes

If you are only interested in some jokes, I can offer you some awk programs to select them. Of course, you can read only the section on your favourite subject, but there is another possibility. If you first download the collection you can use the following filter programs on it.

The awk-script select.awk selects the jokes on the categories in the first line of every entry to select for mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology or if you like engineering and computer science jokes, though the last two do not really fall into the scope of this collection.

The program newjoke.awk selects the new or changed jokes since the last time I posted the collection on the net. Those jokes are from the last two months.

Awk should be available on all unix-sites as awk, nawk or gawk. For the PC you can download a DOS version from the nearest Simtel-mirror. I personally use the Gnu version gawk.

### Finally

[ Science Jokes | History of the Science Jokes | Back to Homepage of Joachim Verhagen ]