Title: Elephant Volume

General Information about Item:

• Joke
• English
• United States

Informant Data:

• Sarah Rote is a Dartmouth 18 studying environmental engineering. She’s a 21 year old from Newton Square, Pennsylvania.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context
  • This joke would be shared among peers during casual conversation for humorous effect. It would likely be exclusively shared among engineers who would find enjoyment in the self-deprecating humor, or among people of neighboring STEM fields in order to mock engineers.

• Cultural Context
  • This joke hits upon a similar vein of cultural context as the “Sick Chicken” joke–the act of simplification for modeling engineering designs. A model that is overly simplified is a bad design, and so this joke mocks a “bad” engineer by exaggerating a trait that is stereotypically associated with engineers–the simplification of systems. What’s more, it draws on the cultural climate around mathematicians and physicists. Mathematicians are known for working almost exclusively in theoretical domains, so they rarely ever simplify. Math is concerned with exactness and precision,  and so some of the joke’s humor derives from emulating this archetype–the mathematician takes the most precise, and the most computationally heavy approach. Triple integration is the most precise and mathematically pure means of volume computation. The physicist emulates his own stereotype–the experimentally-driven. Physicists run physical experiments, unlike mathematicians,  so the physicist takes a very practical approach to volume calculation–water displacement. Then the engineer, as the punchline, is caught in the act of over-simplification just as the engineer in the Sick Chicken joke. He hazards a guess at the radius–not bothering with exact measurements and implying that he intends to model the elephant as a sphere.

Item:

A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are at the circus. They ask each other what is the approximate volume of an elephant.

The mathematician starts drawing a triple integral and solving a complicated equation.

The physicist says, “We need a tank of water this big. We’re going to put the elephant in and measure the displacement.”

The engineer stretches out his arms and says, “Approximate radius of the elephant.”

Transcript:

• Chrissy: Could you state your name and background?
• Sarah: My name is Sarah. I’m an 18 studying environmental engineering.
• Chrissy: And can you tell me what your joke is?
• Sarah: Uh, a mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are at the circus. They ask each other what is the approximate volume of an elephant. The mathematician starts drawing a triple integral and solving a complicated equation. The physicist says “We need a tank of water this big, gonna put the elephant in and measure the displacement.” The engineer stretches out his arms and says “Approximate radius of the elephant.”
• Chrissy: (laughs) Could you tell us, uh, when–do you remember when you first heard the joke?
• Sarah: I mean I think I read it online but I don’t remember the exact setting.
• Chrissy: And can you give kind of a brief explanation of the joke. What about engineering culture makes it funny?
• Sarah: Um, about the engineer, its that–make very broad approximations of real life. As in, an elephant is not a sphere. The mathematician makes it very exact, but the engineers approximate a lot.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Informant’s Comments:

Collector’s Comments:

Collector’s Name: Christina Long

Tags/Keywords:

• Joke. Elephant volume. Engineering. Circus.

Title: Sick Chicken

General Information about Item:

• Joke
• Not language-specific

Informant Data:

• Ci Yu Yan is a 3-2 Dual Degree student from Vassar College who’s studying computer engineering at Dartmouth.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context
  • This is a piece of folklore that would likely be shared among peers in a light-hearted manner. If shared among engineers, it would be humorous self-deprecation. If shared among a rivaling scientific field, it would be to mock engineers.

• Cultural Context
  • This joke makes humorous light of a common challenge engineers face: the practice of making necessary simplifications to models without compromising its practicality. From outside the cultural perspective, an audience to the joke could easily pick up on the fact that the humor is in the absurdity of the simplifications the engineer makes when assessing the chicken. However, there is more nuance to understanding the joke. Good modeling is usually a trade-off. A complicated and specific model might give the most accurate result, but it may be entirely impractical to compute. On the other end of the spectrum, an overly-simplified model is practical to work with, but may be grossly inaccurate. One of the biggest frustrations in engineering is creating a model that works in theory, and falls apart in practice. The simplifications that an engineer makes are meant to be almost secret–the non-informed spectator should trust that the engineer’s model is “correct” to the real world system, even though the real system is so vastly complicated that no doubt simplifications and assumptions needed to be made. The joke makes light of that “secret” coming to light in a clumsy, absurd way.The engineer has taken an extremely complicated system–a living creature–and applied some of the most basic and reductive assumptions that engineers like to work with–spherical shape and no air friction. Obviously, the model falls apart, so the humor comes from an engineer understanding the absurd hyperbole of the common occurrence of a model being oversimplified.

Item:

A farmer has some chickens, except one of these chickens is sick, so he hires an engineer to look at his chicken and see what’s wrong.

The engineer comes, observes the chicken, does some calculations and says, “Okay, I know what’s wrong with your chicken, but only if it’s spherical and in a vacuum.”

Transcript:

• Chrissy: Alright, so what’s your name and background?
• Ci Yu: Ci Yu Yan. Background is a 3-2 student from Vassar doing electrical engineering.
• Chrissy: And what’s the joke?
• Ci Yu: Okay so this is a joke I heard on tv, but, um. So, this farmer has all these chickens, except one of these chickens is sick, so he hires an engineer to like, look at his chicken and see what’s wrong. So the engineer comes and observes the chicken and does all these calculations and is like, “Okay, I know what’s wrong with your chicken, but only if it’s spherical and in a vacuum.”
• Chrissy: Okay, and what’s the explanation of the joke?
• Ci Yu: So the explanation of the joke is that, um, when you like take any physics or engineering classes, a lot of the, like, problems are simplified to like have very ideal conditions without including, like, a lot of things like friction or other disturbances so, yeah.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Collector’s Name: Christina Long

Tags/Keywords:

• Joke. Sick chicken. Vacuum. Engineering. Hyperbole.

Title: Toilet Break

General Information about Item:

• Joke
• Not language specific.

Informant Data:

• Anthony Addo is a senior at Dartmouth College studying Computer Science. He was born in Connecticut but has lived in Ohio and Ghana, and currently lives in Ghana.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context
  • The joke was collected on November 6th, 2017. Anthony first encountered the joke as it was told by his friend Sam when they were both in CS 31, Dartmouth’s class on algorithms. Anthony noted that CS 31 is a “very tough course,” and that jokes were shared between students in this course as a way to relieve stress.

• Cultural Context
  • The CS 31 Algorithms course is known to be one of the more difficult courses in the Computer Science department, and taking the course can be considered a rite of passage for students of Computer Science. The joke’s somewhat taboo toilet humor adds some levity and fun to a stressful term for students of the course. The joke also references some popular stereotypes of tech companies like Microsoft, IBM, and Apple, reducing and parodying their programming practices and policies into a punchline centered around bathroom etiquette. This sort of toilet humor can be enjoyed not only by computer scientists and students of computer science, but anyone in the world with knowledge of the stereotypes associated with Microsoft, IBM, and Apple in terms of how they approach writing code and how these companies view each other.

Item:

Three programmers meet accidentally at the urinal while attending a technical conference. The first programmer finishes up his business, washes his hands with loads of water, walks over to the towels and uses almost the entire roll to dry his hands. He turns to the other two and says “At Microsoft, we are trained to be extremely thorough.”

The second programmer finishes up, walks over to the sink and washes his hands with much less water, then uses a single towel to dry his hands. He remarks to the other two “At IBM, we are trained not only to be very thorough, but also very efficient.”

The third programmer finishes his business, walks right past the sink and towel rack and lauds over his shoulder as he walks over the door: “At Apple we don’t piss in our hands!”

Transcript:

• Stephanie: Can you tell me your name and background please?
• Anthony: My name is Anthony Addo. I was born in Connecticut but I’ve lived my life in Ohio and Ghana. I currently live in Ghana. I’m a Computer Science major, uh, and I’m a senior at Dartmouth College, an ’18.
• Stephanie: Wonderful. Can you tell me the joke you have?
• Anthony: Yes. Alright, listen closely. Three programmers meet accidentally at the urinal while attending a technical conference. The first programmer finishes up his business, washes his hands with loads of water, walks over to the towels and uses almost the entire roll to dry his hands. He turns to the other two and says “At Microsoft, we are trained to be extremely thorough.” The second programmer finishes up, walks over to the sink and washes his hands with much less water, then uses a single towel to dry his hands. He remarks to the other two “At IBM, we are trained not only to be very thorough, but also very efficient.” The third programmer finishes his business, walks right past the sink and towel rack and lauds over his shoulder as he walks over the door: “At Apple we don’t piss in our hands!”
• Stephanie: Ah, alright. Could you tell me where you first heard the joke please?
• Anthony: I first heard the joke from my friend Sam, at this CS — I think it was CS31 — uh, very tough course, but we were just trying to loss some steam doing a joke, it was really good.
• Stephanie: Alright, and can you explain why the joke is funny?
• Anthony: It’s funny because… it’s interesting, because um… the first programmer mentions that he is extremely thorough with how he does his work. He’s a programmer, and he makes sure he gets all the loopholes, and makes sure he goes through every single one. As for the second programmer from IBM, who only uses one towel to wash his hands, or to dry his hands, uh… He’s simply very efficient with his code, he makes sure his code is, it’s simple and clean… As for the Apple programmer, he just does the job. He simply streamlines it,  and does it perfectly every single time.
• Stephanie: Thank you very much!

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Collector’s Name: Stephanie Guo

Tags/Keywords:

• Joke. Tech company. Microsoft. IBM. Apple. Toilet.

Title: Eye Doctor

General Information about Item:

• Joke
• English
• United States

Informant Data:

• Anthony Addo is a senior at Dartmouth College studying Computer Science. He was born in Connecticut but has lived in Ohio and Ghana, and currently lives in Ghana.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context
  • The joke was collected on November 6th, 2017. Anthony first encountered the joke as it was told to him by a friend in his CS 1 class. His friend introduced this joke to Anthony to help “ease his nerves” since he was struggling with an assignment, and its relative simplicity  makes it accessible to any English speaker who has heard of the programming languages Java and C#.

• Cultural Context
  • The CS 1 course is the introductory computer science course at Dartmouth, and is often the first time students are exposed to the world of computer programming. This pun in particular makes use of the homonymous relationship between the name of the programming language C# (pronounced see-sharp) and the phrase “see sharp,” as in “seeing clearly.” It derives humor from an English pun on the letter “C” and the word “see” and doesn’t require any programming knowledge besides the fact that a language called C# exists, and is a properly simplistic and funny joke to share with an English-speaking student programmer feeling discouraged with an assignment.

Item: 

Q: Why did the Java programmer go see the eye doctor?

A: Because he didn’t C#!

Transcript:

• Stephanie: Alright, could you give me your name and background please?
• Anthony: My name is Anthony Addo. I’m a Dartmouth ’18. Born in Hartford, Connecticut but also have lived in Ohio and Ghana.
• Stephanie: Alright, what’s your joke?
• Anthony: My joke, as a computer science is this joke. Why did the Java programmer go see the eye doctor? Because he didn’t C#! Badun tsss!
• Stephanie: Alright. Um, can you tell me where you first heard the joke, or who told it to you?
• Anthony: I first heard the joke in my CS1 class. I was doing some really really um, hard, Python, I was trying to make some sort of, um, planetary , motion. And it was really wracking my brain, so I asked my friend, just to help me out. The first thing he did was try to ease my nerves by telling me this joke. I laughed. Well, I chuckled. But it was good.
• Stephanie: Alright, and can you explain why it’s funny?
• Anthony: Absolutely. So in computer science you have many languages. Java isn’t coffee, its actually a language. So java is one language, and C# is also a language as well. So “C#” is actually a pun on “seeing sharp”!

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Collector’s Name: Stephanie Guo

Tags/Keywords:

• Joke. English. Eye Doctor. Java. C#.