Mathematician Vs Physicist Vs Engineer - What is "pi"?

Mathematician: Pi is the number expressing the relationship between the circumference of a circle and its diameter.
(I didn't write this, but one mathematician, whose name (Darren Charles) I won't mention, told me that the correct definition is "Pi is the area of a circle whose radius is 1". Silly me... - Lest)

Physicist: Pi is 3.1415927 plus or minus 0.000000005.

Engineer: Pi is about 3.

Biochemist: Since our results are hardly ever perfect, why bother with using such an irrational number?

An Engineer, a Physicist, and a Mathematician all go to the same conference. University budgets being what they are, they all stay in the same cheap hotel. Each room has the same floor plan, has the same cheap TV, the same cheap bed, and a small bathroom. Instead of a sprinkler system, the hotel has opted for Fire Buckets. The Engineer, Physicist, and Mathematician are all asleep in bed.

At about 2AM, the Physicist wakes up because he smells smoke. He looks in the corner of the room and sees that the TV set is on fire! He dashes into the bathroom, fills the Fire Bucket to overflowing with water, and drenches the TV set. The fire goes out, and the Physicist goes back to sleep.

A little while later, the Engineer wakes because he smells smoke. He looks in the corner of his room and sees that the TV set is on fire. He grabs a handy envelope, estimates the BTU output of the fire, scribbles a quick calculation, then dashes into the bathroom and fills the Fire Bucket with just enough water to douse the flames. He puts the fire out and goes back to sleep.

In a little while, the Mathematician wakes up to the smell of smoke. He looks in the corner of his room and sees the TV on fire. He looks into the bathroom and sees the Fire Bucket. Having determined that a solution exists, he goes back to sleep.

Q: How can you tell an extroverted engineer?
A: When he talks to you, he looks at your shoes instead of his own.

Engineering is the art of molding materials we do not fully understand into shapes we cannot fully analyze and preventing the public from realizing the full extent of our ignorance.

Q: Why did the engineers cross the road? A: Because they looked in the file and that's what they did last year.
 
 
 

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