Long ago I took an oral exam Algebra and my professor asked me the following: "Let $G$ be an abelian group of order 17020. What is its commutator subgroup $G’$?" At first I focused on factoring the number, but in a few seconds I realized with a smile that he said abelian and of course gave the right answer. Afterwards, I found the question very funny.
On another occasion I sat down with another professor over lunch and we discussed group theory and suddenly he quick-wittedly remarked: can you classify all groups $G$ with only a single non-normal subgroup $H$? Of course, such an $H$ must be normal by definition and without saying anything we could not resist to roar with laughter …
Have you also come across some of these sorts of math jokes?
You must be joking ... math and fun
5
$\begingroup$
abstract-algebra
group-theory
finite-groups
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0@Arturo Yes, but it still ranks number 3 even if not signed in to Google, so I think it has to do with the general high pagerank Google assigns MSE. – 2012-06-26
1 Answers
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I’m fond of the first exercise in the second edition of Edward Scheinerman’s Mathematics: A Discrete Introduction:
Simplify the following algebraic expression: $(x-a)(x-b)(x-c)\dots(x-z)$
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5It remainds me of that old joke: What is a product of all numbers from -33 to 41? – 2012-06-26