The professor showed a large cage with a male rat in it.
The rat was in the middle of the cage.
Then, the professor kept a piece of cake on one side and kept a female rat on the other side.
The male rat ran towards the cake and ate it.
Then, the professor changed the cake and replaced it with some bread.
The male rat ran towards the bread.
This experiment went on with the professor changing the food every time.
And, every time, the male rat ran towards the food item and never towards the female rat.
Professor said: This experiment shows that food is the greatest strength and attraction.
Then, one of the students from the back rows said, “Sir, why don’t you change the female rat? This one may be his wife!”
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A statistics professor was describing sampling theory to his class, explaining how a sample can be studied and used to generalize to a population.
One of the students in the back of the room kept shaking his head.
“What’s the matter?” asked the professor. “I don’t believe it,” said the student, “why not study the whole population in the first place?”
The professor continued explaining the ideas of random and representative samples. The student still shook his head. The professor launched into the mechanics of proportional stratified samples, randomized cluster sampling, the standard error of the mean, and the central limit theorem.
The student remained unconvinced saying, “Too much theory, too risky, I couldn’t trust just a few numbers in place of ALL of them.”
Attempting a more practical example, the professor then explained the scientific rigor and meticulous sample selection of the Nielsen television ratings which are used to determine how multiple millions of advertising dollars are spent.
The student remained unimpressed saying, “You mean that just a sample of a few thousand can tell us exactly what over 250 MILLION people are doing?”
Finally, the professor, somewhat disgruntled with the skepticism, replied, “Well, the next time you go to the campus clinic and they want to do a blood test…tell them that’s not good enough …tell them to TAKE IT ALL!!”
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A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day.
“In English,” he said, “A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.”
A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”
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Importance of Physics
A college physics professor was explaining a particularly complicated concept to his class when he was rudely interupted by a pre-med student.
“Why do we have to learn this stuff?” one young man blurted out.
“To save lives,” the professor responded before continuing the lecture.
A few minutes later the student spoke up again. “So how does physics save lives?”
The professor stared at the student for a long time without saying a word. Finally the professor continued. “Physics saves lives,” he said, “because it keeps certain people out of medical school.”
