Derivative Humor—A Stand-up Mathematician Spills the Beans
By Tim Chartier, Davidson College
Simon Pampena
So, a mathematician walks into a bar and asks “Is this the start of some sort of joke?” Now, that sounds neither like a joke nor a real-life story—unless you are Simon Pampena. Simon is a stand-up mathematician who has been a Numeracy Ambassador for the Australian Government since 2009, a presenter for Outrageous Acts of Science since 2012, and is stalwart on the very popular YouTube channel Numberphile with its millions of subscribers. If you have a mathematical funny bone, Pampena is ready to delight your numerical world. If you appreciate the North American spelling of “math” as a four letter word, then Pampena is ready to bring a smile with his math humor! What does it take to do mathematical stand-up and be funny? Let’s see what Simon says!
Tim Chartier: You are a stand-up mathematician. That honestly seems like the joke but it isn’t. Can you help describe what that means, what you do, where you do it and where someone could see your work?
Simon Pampena: Hang-on a minute—you’ve asked four questions in one! Let’s tackle one part at a time.
If you’d like a definition of a stand-up mathematician then I would say it’s someone who combines comedy and math in live performance. And while I can understand how for many that sounds like an impossibility, mathematical ideas and the artistry of stand-up have a lot of crossover. A great proof is like a riveting story—there are twists and turns and then you end up in unexpected territory. A great comedic routine follows a similar structure. Combine the two and you have the essence of what I do.
I have plied my trade in many different arenas—comedy clubs, schools, universities, and of course as the entertainment in a multitude of math and stats conferences. I have also used my skills in writing and presenting on the internet and TV via YouTube’s Numberphile and Discovery’s Outrageous Acts of Science.
Unfortunately due to the pandemic, I have been prevented from performing live for a substantial period of time. If all goes well I will be out and about again in 2022.
Tim Chartier: How did you first get involved in stand-up comedy and then specifically stand-up mathematics? Have you ever done stand-up about something other than mathematics?
Simon Pampena: When I was in my early 20s I moved to Melbourne—Australia’s second largest city. This was in part to study pure math at the University of Melbourne but also to explore my interest in stand-up comedy. Melbourne was and still is the home of live performance in our part of the world and as such attracts many creative people to it. When I started doing stand-up I was just making jokes about things people could easily relate to—growing up, family, dating—topics that are comedic staples the world over. But very quickly those topics felt very limited. I looked to comics I admired and worked out that they all had a unique voice. They each had their own fields of interest and had developed ways of communicating those things they were passionate about. I looked at my passion for mathematics and saw an opportunity—I could communicate what math meant to me. It was a bold idea. When I told my girlfriend at the time she said she would leave me if I went on stage and tried to make people laugh at math. I know… it’s surprising I had a girlfriend. But it’s ok, she left me.
Tim Chartier: What’s hard about being funny with mathematics?
Simon Pampena: A mathematical joke is often like the Dirac delta function—a one-liner no one understands. The hard thing about being funny with mathematics is that unless it’s an audience of math students or professional mathematicians then not everyone is going to understand what you’re talking about, e.g. a joke involving the Dirac delta function. To make math funny to a general audience you need to explain your chosen concept while you’re playing around with it. I’ll explain further in response to your next question…
Tim Chartier: What’s your process for developing humor? If someone wanted to do stand-up, especially about mathematics, what would be your recommendation?
Simon Pampena: Firstly, all comedy must be made with an audience in mind. So if you’re writing comedy based on your own interests—like mathematics—then find an audience that shares those interests. However if you develop comedy around the tangible aspects of your personal interests then a more general audience can enjoy it. In fact, making your interests relatable can create very engaging and enjoyable content. As an example, you could demonstrate why Graham’s Number is so interesting by explaining how the number itself cannot physically fit in your brain. There just isn’t enough capacity to encode all that information. In fact, if you did, your brain would collapse into a black hole—one of the rare occasions where math is demonstrably bad for your health.
Tim Chartier: How does “math over social media” versus “math in front of people” differ?
Simon Pampena: Math over social media must be brief and as such must be as self-contained as possible. When doing math stand-up in front of a crowd there’s usually more time to develop bigger ideas. But with a tweet say, you’ve got 280 characters and a couple of images/gifs to get your message through.
Tim Chartier: If I wanted to simply be funnier, do you have any tips?
Simon Pampena: Like anything, if you want to be funny then study what makes you laugh. Most comedy is based on the delivery of a surprise. Returning to our Graham's number example, we could tell a crowd “Ron Graham discovered his unfathomably large number when calculating the upper bound of a problem in combinatorics. He wanted to know how big a set needed to be before he was sure, beyond any doubt, that one particular combination existed. The lower bound was 6.” The juxtaposition of a ridiculously large number and 6 is surprising and hence, funny.
Tim Chartier: If someone wants to learn more about stand-up mathematics and stand-up comedy, what are your suggestions?
Simon Pampena: There are a few people around who practice their own version of mathematical stand-up—Matt Parker and Dave Goreman do great work for example. But there are other stand-ups who do an amazing job creating nerdy routines that any budding math stand-up could learn from. Patton Oswalt manages to convey the subtleties of the Marvel Universe in brilliant comedic rants. If Oswalt had studied math he would be an amazing stand-up mathematician. It leaves the door open for any math grad with a penchant for performing and the desire to communicate!
If you want to see more of Simon Pampena or watch some of his videos, go to https://www.icanmath.com/.
Tim Chartier is the Joseph R. Morton Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Davidson College.