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There's plenty of humor on arXiv, and that's part of why it's so incredible!

Some lists:

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/86346/is-it-ok-...

https://www.ellipsix.net/arxiv-joke-papers.html



Joke titles and/or author lists are also quite popular, e.g. the Greenberg, Greenberger, Greenbergest paper[1], a paper with a cat coauthor whose title I can’t seem to recall (but I’m sure there’s more than one I’ve encountered), or even the venerable, unfortunate in its joke but foundational in its substance Alpher, Bethe, Gamow paper[2]. Somewhat closer to home, I think computer scientist Conor McBride[3] is the champion of paper titles (entries include “Elimination with a motive”, “The gentle art of levitation”, “I am not a number: I am a free variable”, “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right”, and “Doo bee doo bee doo”) and sometimes code in papers:

  letmeB this (F you) | you == me = B this
                      | otherwise = F you
  letmeB this (B that)            = B that
  letmeB this (App fun arg)       = letmeB this fun `App` letmeB this arg
(Yes, this is working code; yes, it’s crystal clear in the context of the paper.)

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9306225

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpher%E2%80%93Bethe%E2%80%93G...

[3] http://strictlypositive.org/


> paper with a cat coauthor whose title I can't seem to recall

You probably have in mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._D._C._Willard (coauthor of multiple papers, sole author of at least one).


Consider posting this as a new post! It seems like a fun list to read through




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