Math jokes (dirty)
Pertti Lounesto
> Pin and S Pin, get it? Haar, Haar
I am not a native English speaker, and cannot figure out this.
My dictionaries are not really helpful, when they say:
Haar, Alfred = hungarian mathematician (mathematics dictionary)
haar = a chilly wind over the sea (English dictionary)
So maybe Dale Hall uttered a joke about the spin and pin groups.
This assumption is supported by the paper of Atiyah-Bott-Shapiro,
Clifford modules, Topology, 1964, page 1, where it is written that
"This joke is due to J-P. Serre", and by the book Gilbert-Murray,
Clifford Algebras etc., 1991, page 47, where it is written that
"in a jocular vein we are led to the group Pin".
But what is this joke about the Pin-groups? I guess most of
the people, who refer to it, do not know why it is so amusing
(it is in fact a dirty joke).
--
Pertti Lounesto E-mail address: loun...@dopey.hut.fi
Leigh Palmer
(Pertti Lounesto) wrote:
>
> Dale Hall <w...@linus.mitre.org> writes on Nov. 5:
> > Pin and S Pin, get it? Haar, Haar
I don't get it, but see below. "Haar, Haar" is a laugh, I think.
> I am not a native English speaker, and cannot figure out this.
> My dictionaries are not really helpful, when they say:
>
> Haar, Alfred = hungarian mathematician (mathematics dictionary)
> haar = a chilly wind over the sea (English dictionary)
>
> So maybe Dale Hall uttered a joke about the spin and pin groups.
> This assumption is supported by the paper of Atiyah-Bott-Shapiro,
> Clifford modules, Topology, 1964, page 1, where it is written that
> "This joke is due to J-P. Serre", and by the book Gilbert-Murray,
> Clifford Algebras etc., 1991, page 47, where it is written that
> "in a jocular vein we are led to the group Pin".
Read as "a group pee-in", where "pee" is English colloquial for "urinate",
it suggests a sixties event called a "be-in" which was
an excuse to get stoned in groups. A pee-in is just as silly.
> But what is this joke about the Pin-groups? I guess most of
> the people, who refer to it, do not know why it is so amusing
> (it is in fact a dirty joke).
Well, perhaps, but it's not a knee slapper. Even I am capable of better
than that!
Leigh
john baez
>In article <LOUNESTO.93...@dopey.hut.fi>, loun...@dopey.hut.fi
>(Pertti Lounesto) wrote:
>> Dale Hall <w...@linus.mitre.org> writes on Nov. 5:
>> > Pin and S Pin, get it? Haar, Haar
>I don't get it, but see below. "Haar, Haar" is a laugh, I think.
Haar discovered the invariant measure on a compact topological group, so
maybe Dale Hall was making an extra joke there, but the main joke
concerned the formation of the word Pin, which is what linguists call a
back-formation.
>> "in a jocular vein we are led to the group Pin".
>Read as "a group pee-in", where "pee" is English colloquial for "urinate",
>it suggests a sixties event called a "be-in" which was
>an excuse to get stoned in groups. A pee-in is just as silly.
You have a dirty mind... indeed, this whole thread is pretty bizarre.
The joke about "Pin" is simply this: S usually stands for "special,"
meaning determinant = 1, as in U(n) versus SU(n), O(n) versus SO(n) and
the like. People invented Spin(n), with "spin" meaning the obvious
physical thing, as a double cover of SO(n), so in a stroke of wit never
since surpassed in the mathematical establishment, somebody decided to call the
double cover of O(n) "Pin(n)". Laugh, darn it!!!
Leigh Palmer
wrote:
> You have a dirty mind... indeed, this whole thread is pretty bizarre.
> The joke about "Pin" is simply this: S usually stands for "special,"
> meaning determinant = 1, as in U(n) versus SU(n), O(n) versus SO(n) and
> the like. People invented Spin(n), with "spin" meaning the obvious
> physical thing, as a double cover of SO(n), so in a stroke of wit never
> since surpassed in the mathematical establishment, somebody decided to call the
> double cover of O(n) "Pin(n)". Laugh, darn it!!!
I jus' 'bout fell off my chair. I didn't think mine was funny, or dirty for
that matter, but yours is positively [sic]
The imagery of a group pee-in summoned up my memory of the observation by
Mark Twain about the gravest sin possible according to the Bible, a book
with which he was familiar but otherwise did not seem to be preoccupied.
According to him that sin was urinating against a wall, and he cited
several instances in which those who transgressed thusly were punished
severely by the deity. It's in the book!
Thus a group pee-in could be the ecclesiastical equivalent of civil
disobedience, once a very popular social activity where I come from.
Tempting a lightning stroke to the appropriate part of my anatomy in that
way is more than I'd care to risk, however, and I'm a hereditary atheist.
I guess I'll sign off there. I really thought I had the explanation, but I
defer to John's, even though I don't understand a bit of it. I'm getting
old, I guess, but I hope to do a lot more of that!
Leigh
Pertti Lounesto
as postings, I can confirm my anticipation that native English speakers
cannot figure out this joke. The joke was first announced in the
article M.F. Atiyah, R. Bott, A. Shapiro+: Clifford modules, Topology 3,
suppl. 1 (1964), pp. 3-38, on page 3 line 17 (introducing the notation
of the "group+ Pin(k)") and the bottomline (stating that "+This joke is
due to J-P. Serre"). Part of the joke resides in the posting written
by John Baez, who quite correctly explained that Spin(n) got its name
from physical spinning of a particle, and Spin(n) is the double cover
of the rotation group SO(n), which is a subgroup of the orthogonal
group O(n), and thereby it seems natural to call a double cover of O(n)
as Pin(n). But this is only a part of the joke annotated by Atiyah
et al. - a part of good jokes is that some people cannot figure them
out - in addition to the serious looking explanation of John Baez there
is a hidden part, to which Atyiah et al. give a hint by calling it a
joke and referring it to J-P. Serre.
Let me give a further hint: According to my mathematics dictionary
Jean-Pierre Serre is a French mathematician (who has received a Fields
medal and who is a member of the College de France). Since this joke
is evidently still a bit difficult to figure out, I will give further
hints below.
WARNING: Do not look below, if you want to
figure out the joke by yourself.
I have given lectures on spin groups and pin groups in England and in US.
The audiences were just listening to the lectures - seriously as usual.
When I gave the same lecture in France in French, my audience burst out
laughing every time I mentioned the pin group (I said "groupe de pin").
After the lecture I was given an explanation that in a serious lecture
you are not supposed to speak about "groupe de pine".
But maybe I am too helpful here (this is a vulgar joke, and it is funny
just because of the trap to which I fell in France).
Pertti Lounesto
> Pin and S Pin, get it? Haar, Haar
This joke was first announced by M.F. Atiyah, R. Bott, A. Shapiro+:
Clifford modules, Topology 3, suppl. 1 (1964), pp. 3-38, on page 3
line 17 (introducing the notation of the "group+ Pin(k)") and the
bottomline (stating that "+This joke is due to J-P. Serre").
Several math articles and books refer to this joke, but do not give
any explanation, like J. Gilbert, M. Murray: Clifford Algebras and
Dirac Operators in Harmonic Analysis, Cambridge UP, 1991, page 47,
where it is written "in a jocular vein we are led to the group Pin".
John Baez <ba...@guitar.ucr.edu> explains on Nov. 29:
>Haar discovered the invariant measure on a compact topological group, so
>maybe Dale Hall was making an extra joke there, but the main joke
>concerned the formation of the word Pin, which is what linguists call a
>back-formation.
>The joke about "Pin" is simply this: S usually stands for "special,"
>meaning determinant = 1, as in U(n) versus SU(n), O(n) versus SO(n) and
>the like. People invented Spin(n), with "spin" meaning the obvious
>physical thing, as a double cover of SO(n), so in a stroke of wit never
>since surpassed in the mathematical establishment, somebody decided to
>call the double cover of O(n) "Pin(n)".
John Baez explains part of the joke -- the serious looking "official"
part. But there is another interpretational part to which Atiyah et al.
give a hint by annotating this joke to Serre, who is a *French*. The
written form of "pin group" is "pin groupe" in French, but you must
know French pronunciation and street language to dissolve this joke:
The following expressions are pronounced the same way:
pin group [in English]
pine groupe [in French]
and my French dictionary tells me that "pine" = male genital organs
in jargon. So Leigh Palmer did come close to the solution after all.
But there is more than that. The group Pin(n) is always composed of
two parts: the even part Spin(n) and the odd part Pin(n)\Spin(n).
So, if you explain in a serious mathematical lecture in France that
a "pine groupe" has two parts in it ...
Mitchell E. Timin
to coarse laughter, similar to ha-ha or heh-heh or he, he ,he...
Matthew P Wiener
>John Baez explains part of the joke -- the serious looking "official"
>part. But there is another interpretational part to which Atiyah et
>al. give a hint by annotating this joke to Serre, who is a *French*.
There's a new book by a Name on elliptic curves, with a little footnote
explaining the British humor behind the names of the WC and TS groups,
and how He changed the TS to Sha.
--
-Matthew P Wiener (wee...@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
William C Waterhouse
In article 93Dec4...@dopey.hut.fi, loun...@dopey.hut.fi (Pertti Lounesto) writes:
...
> This joke was first announced by M.F. Atiyah, R. Bott, A. Shapiro+:
> Clifford modules, Topology 3, suppl. 1 (1964), pp. 3-38, on page 3
> line 17 (introducing the notation of the "group+ Pin(k)") and the
> bottomline (stating that "+This joke is due to J-P. Serre").
> John Baez explains part of the joke -- the serious looking "official"
> part. But there is another interpretational part to which Atiyah et al.
> give a hint by annotating this joke to Serre, who is a *French*. The
> written form of "pin group" is "pin groupe" in French, but you must
> know French pronunciation and street language to dissolve this joke:
> The following expressions are pronounced the same way:
>
> pin group [in English]
> pine groupe [in French]
>
> and my French dictionary tells me that "pine" = male genital organs
> in jargon. So Leigh Palmer did come close to the solution after all.
> Pertti Lounesto E-mail address: loun...@dopey.hut.fi
Here I think we have reached the source of the confusion.
French "pine" is pronounced in a way that (more or less) rhymes
with the English word "seen," not with "sin."
For non-native speakers, let me expand a bit on this point.
The words "sin" and "seen" are clearly heard
as distinct by English speakers. This contrast shows,
as the linguists say, that the two vowels involved are
different "phonemes" in English. Other contrasts showing
the same distinction are "his"/"he's" and "it"/"eat."
No English speaker would think that French "pine" is the
same sound as English "pin."
Of course, this is a particular feature of English. A
corresponding distinction exists in German
("Mitte"/"Miete"), but not in the Romance languages.
It is indeed a mark of a strong Romance accent in English
to pronounce the short "i" like "ee". But Serre is quite
at home in English (he often spends a semester in the US),
and (though I cannot recall for sure) I do not remember
his making that mistake. So I think this was very unlikely
to be part of the original joke.
William C. Waterhouse
Penn State
pal...@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
had originally planned to call "espaces bornologique"
(a kind of locally convex topological vector space)
"espaces bornagraphiques"---until someone remarked that
the Germans weren't too good at distinguishing initial
"b"'s from initial "p"'s.
Pertti Lounesto
>This joke was first announced by M.F. Atiyah, R. Bott, A. Shapiro+:
>Clifford modules, Topology 3, suppl. 1 (1964), pp. 3-38, on page 3
>line 17 (introducing the notation of the "group+ Pin(k)") and the
>bottomline (stating that "+This joke is due to J-P. Serre").
>
>any explanation, like J. Gilbert, M. Murray: Clifford Algebras and
>Dirac Operators in Harmonic Analysis, Cambridge UP, 1991, page 47,
>where it is written "in a jocular vein we are led to the group Pin".
>
>John Baez <ba...@guitar.ucr.edu> explains on Nov. 29:
>>Haar discovered the invariant measure on a compact topological group, so
>>maybe Dale Hall was making an extra joke there, but the main joke
>>concerned the formation of the word Pin, which is what linguists call a
>>back-formation.
>>The joke about "Pin" is simply this: S usually stands for "special,"
>>meaning determinant = 1, as in U(n) versus SU(n), O(n) versus SO(n) and
>>the like. People invented Spin(n), with "spin" meaning the obvious
>>physical thing, as a double cover of SO(n), so in a stroke of wit never
>>since surpassed in the mathematical establishment, somebody decided to
>>call the double cover of O(n) "Pin(n)".
>
>part. But there is another interpretational part to which Atiyah et al.
>give a hint by annotating this joke to Serre, who is a *French*. The
>written form of "pin group" is "pin groupe" in French, but you must
>know French pronunciation and street language to dissolve this joke:
>The following expressions are pronounced the same way:
>
> pin group [in English]
> pine groupe [in French]
>
>and my French dictionary tells me that "pine" = male genital organs
>in jargon. So Leigh Palmer did come close to the solution after all.
>
>two parts: the even part Spin(n) and the odd part Pin(n)\Spin(n).
>So, if you explain in a serious mathematical lecture in France that
>--
> Pertti Lounesto E-mail address: loun...@dopey.hut.fi
w...@math.psu.edu (William C Waterhouse) writes on Dec. 6:
> Here I think we have reached the source of the confusion.
> French "pine" is pronounced in a way that (more or less) rhymes
> with the English word "seen," not with "sin."
>
> For non-native speakers, let me expand a bit on this point.
> The words "sin" and "seen" are clearly heard
> as distinct by English speakers. This contrast shows,
> as the linguists say, that the two vowels involved are
> different "phonemes" in English. Other contrasts showing
> the same distinction are "his"/"he's" and "it"/"eat."
> No English speaker would think that French "pine" is the
> same sound as English "pin."
>
> Of course, this is a particular feature of English. A
> corresponding distinction exists in German
> ("Mitte"/"Miete"), but not in the Romance languages.
> It is indeed a mark of a strong Romance accent in English
> to pronounce the short "i" like "ee". But Serre is quite
> at home in English (he often spends a semester in the US),
> and (though I cannot recall for sure) I do not remember
> his making that mistake. So I think this was very unlikely
> to be part of the original joke.
>
> William C. Waterhouse
> Penn State
It is of course possible that my explanation is not part of the
original joke. However, you did misinterprete my explanation of
the assumed joke: It is not about how French people (including
Serre) use English, but how English (and other not-French) people
pronounce French. It is indeed in accordance with the French
spirit/humor to play with words and give other meanings to words
than the ones intended -- especially when foreigners use French.
Waterhouse is right when he says that in French there is only
one length in the pronunciation of "i". There is though a small
distinction between the French words "pin"/"pine" -- I assume the
English would hear those French words something like "pinn"/"pin"
(but neither English nor French is my mother tongue), but all of
this is irrelevant, because my proposed explanation of the joke
is in how French audiences hear somebody (not necessarily English)
speaking about "pin group(e)s".
Even though the original joke may not have been along the lines
I explained, even then the French audiences constantly laugh, when
they hear a non-French speaking in French about "pin(e) group(e)s",
and Waterhouse's explanation does not throw light to this laughter.
Some more light to my explanation might come from the following
experience of mine (happened in Montpellier in September 1989 in
the second workshop on Clifford algebras (and (s)pin goups)):
One of the French organizers, Roger Boudet, was distributing paper
sheets in the middle of a crowd (so that people at the exterior
could not see what Boudet was distributing) and said in English:
"I have a pile of shit here. I will distribute you this shit."
Somebody corrected Boudet's pronunciation and said:
"I guess you try to say: I have a pile of sheets here.
I will distribute these sheets to you."
And Roger Boudet replied:
"Yes, I have a pile of shits here.
I will distribute these shits to you."
And then this exchange of words repeated a couple of times. So my
experience goes along with Waterhouse's: the French have only one
length of "i" (and cannot even pronounce/distinguish a long "i").
--
J R Partington
>
>Here I think we have reached the source of the confusion.
>French "pine" is pronounced in a way that (more or less) rhymes
>with the English word "seen," not with "sin."
>
>Penn State
>
JRP
--
Dr Jonathan R. Partington, School of Mathematics, University of Leeds,
Leeds LS2 9JT, U.K.
"Education must stress morals not mechanics, says Patten"
Pertti Lounesto
M.F. Atiyah, R. Bott, A. Shapiro: Clifford modules, Topology 3,
suppl. 1, (1964), 3-38, consider the double cover Spin(n) of
the rotation group SO(n), and introduce in this connection the
double cover Pin(n) for the orthogonal group O(n).
The authors let the reader understand that the name "pin" was
chosen in a jocular vein, and attribute this joke to J.-P. Serre
who is known to be French. In verbatim the authors write on page 3:
"This joke is due to J-P. Serre."
Le Noveau Petit Dictionnaire de la Langue Francaise, 1993, gives
the following articulation instructions on page 1677:
pin [p\tilde\epsilon] pine(tree)
pine [pin] male genital organs (vulgar)
In the square brackets there is the phonetic transcription followed
by an English translation of the original French explanation.
William Waterhouse (Penn State) wrote in his article of Dec. 6 that he
hears the French word "pine" pronounced (except fot the first letter)
similarly as the English word "seen" and not as the English word "sin".
Most English dictionaries which follow the narrow transcription of the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) give the following instructions:
seen [si:n] (verb) see (see, saw, seen)
sin [sin] transgression of a religious moral law
sin [sain] (math) = sine
pin [pin] short piece of thin, stiff metal with sharp point
pine [pain] pine(tree)
Waterhouse's article is not helpful in explaining this joke, because it
draws attention to how an Englishman hears the French word pine [pin],
whereas the joke is on how Frenchmen hear, for instance, Brazilian or
Polish mathematicians pronounce the word pin [pin] in their talks
delivered in French.
To clarify the misinterpretation of Waterhouse (I have not tried to
imply that it would be funny if a Frenchman says pine [pin] and an
Englishman then hears either peen [pi:n] or pin [pin]) let us see
how Brazilian or Polish mathematicians might verbalize the sentence:
The element cos x + e12 sin x in Pin(2) operates on spinors.
In a talk delivered in English they might use their own mother tongue
articulation for mathematical terms and, for instance, say sin [sin]
instead of sin [sain]. Similarly, in a talk delivered in French they
might also use their own mother tongue in conjunction with mathematical
terms and, for instance, say pin [pin] which a Frenchman might hear
as pine [pin] (alternatively, the lecturers might utter a non-funny
pin [p\tilde\epsilon]).
For the benefit of non-native English speakers I would like to point out
that one pronounces spinor [spinor] and not spinor [spainor] as the
word comes from the verb spin [spin] (this mispronunciation is common).
Waterhouse also thinks that the above explanation is unlikely to be a
part of the original joke of Serre. This would imply that Serre could
not foresee how his compatriots would laugh while listening to foreigners'
talks on pin groups. I have myself attended lectures given by Brazilian
and Polish mathematicians in Montpellier and Toulouse, where some members
of the audience have laughed and given the above explanation. They have
further explained that there was an extra flavor in this joke, because the
pin group Pin(n) contains two parts Spin(n) and Pin(n)\Spin(n).
--
Dale Hall
>For the benefit of the non-english native speakers, haar, haar just refers
>to coarse laughter, similar to ha-ha or heh-heh or he, he ,he...
>
the remark (Haar, Haar) does, of course, refer to coarse laughter, but
it's also invariant with respect to left and right multiplication.
Actually, I spent precious minutes (years ago) attempting to learn
enough of the theory of H_p spaces to be able to produce a version for
Lie groups (with respect to Haar measure). Why? To be able to
proclaim, amongst fanfare and flourish, the Hardy-Haar theory. It
would have featured laughomorphisms a-plenty.
That having been said, I'm already sorry.
Michael A. Stueben
In the early thirtys Alfred Haar and his son were building
what is today known as Haar measure theory (Lebesque measure is
a form of Haar measure.) Anyway, they noted that the Cambridge
scholar G.H. Hardy was working in a related area. So they asked
him to join them. At first he was enthusiastic, but after
consulting with his collegues he changed his mind. The reason,
although never formally stated, is that he feared anything
important that they did would become known as the
Hardy-Haar-Haar theorem.
---
---------------------------------------------------\
| --From Michael Stueben (HS math & CS teacher) ||
| Interests: math curiosities and humor (bawdy ||
| and otherwise). mstu...@tjhsst.vak12ed.edu ||
\--------------------------------------------------\
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