When
“Sense
Mathematicians of
have aHumour”
Mathematics can be regarded as the most rigorous and the most abstract area of
study. The basic building blocks of all of the mathematics we see today are axioms.
Axioms are a set of statements accepted to be true by everybody.
From axioms, theorems are born. Starting from basic axioms such as ‘zero is a number’(1),
mathematicians have been able to prove theorems that surpass all human intuition. Surprisingly,
an estimated number of more than 250,000 mathematical theorems are published each year
(2).
The Four
Colour
Theorem
Most of the time mathematical theorems get
their names after the person who first proved
it or after the person who conjectured it. It is
also a norm to name them for their content.
For example, the famous Four Colour Theorem
(3) states that any political map can be
coloured with at most four colours.
However, in the midst of all the hard work and
sleepless nights dedicated towards proving theorems,
some mathematicians have named their
life’s work with a touch of humour. Here are 10
funnily named theorems that have valid mathematical
proofs.
“ NOTE: The exact mathematical definitions are oversimplified for readability. ”
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University of Peradeniya GAUGE Magazine