3 ms·
I don't get it :( Did she know the answer? Then why the confusion at the start?
by StavrosK 6y ago
I don't get it :( Did she know the answer? Then why the confusion at the start?
- OJFord 6y agoYeah that does push it a bit, but the joke is that she didn't understand what he was talking about with the 'onethirdxcubed', mis-parsing it without context. But when asked the integral, she knew the answer; not because she'd been told.
- StavrosK 6y agoAhh, thank you, that makes sense.
- randcraw 6y agoThe version of the joke I'd heard doesn't include the waitress' attempt to meaninglessly memorize the answer. She simply nods when initially tutored, then later surprises both mathematicians that "an average person" knows how to properly solve an integration problem without any help.
- StavrosK 6y agoI think that's a better version/telling.
- vram22 6y agoThen it could also almost be a joke about parsing and context-free grammars or such.
- 0xabe 6y agoOr in the beginning she’s playing dumb in condescension to the man. The man is trying to prove a point he doesn’t believe. He’s treating her as if she is dumb and doesn’t know the answer, but she does know, and in the end proves she knows it by providing a more complete answer than even the man himself. (You have to assume she knows about the question as the man is telling her the answer.)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kazinator 6y agoThe waitress is a high functioning autistic. She knows calculus, but cannot work out a mishearing of natural language in a noisy environment, and just memorizes the raw phonemes with meaningless word divisons.