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Announcing The Aperiodical’s Best Maths Pun of 2014 Competition

By Christian Lawson-Perfect. Posted December 5, 2014



Here’s one of my favourite maths puns.

What’s yellow and equivalent to the axiom of choice?

Zorn’s Lemon!!!!!!!!

I like it because it’s a real groaner, but to even begin to see what it’s punning on you have to know some pretty obscure facts about set theory. That makes it an ideal maths pun.

Maths puns abound (both upper and lower). Most of the time they make your eyes roll so badly that gimbal lock becomes a consideration, but a real corker makes all the years of mathematical study worthwhile.

Since the year is about to end, we thought it’d be a fun idea to collect some new maths puns, and run a quick competition to find 2014’s best offering (or the local maxipun at 2014, as we like to call it).

Can you do long division? And other questions we’d like answers to.

By Christian Lawson-Perfect. Posted December 21, 2012

Do you know how to do long division? I don’t. Prompted by an annoying article I saw, I’d like to know how many people do know how to do long division.

So this is as good an opportunity as any to use a side-project I’ve been working on recently, which I’ve called The Aperiodical’s Mathematical Survey. I’ve asked quite a few questions like the above here or on Twitter, so I thought it would be a good idea to do something systematic about collecting answers to them.


At the moment, I’ve put up a few questions that occurred to me off the top of my head, such as what’s your favourite number?, how do you write the letter $x$?, and of course, can you do long division?

I hope that if I leave the site running long enough, people will drop in and answer questions every now and then. If we get enough answers I’ll do some Science on the responses, otherwise I’ll just have to do some uninformed Punditry instead.

Please go to The Aperiodical’s Mathematical Survey site and answer a question or two.