Funny by the Numbers

Thank you for joining everyone.

My name is Samuel bait.

I'm a math major turned comedian.

I know and this is funny by the numbers.

I'm going to talk about how comedy is ultimately mathematical

and you can use these principles for whatever funny content

you create.

So let's get into it.

So my name is Samuel Bait and here is my

numbers 33 years old.

I have two degrees, one in business administration, one in

applied mathematics.

That's why do stand up comedy now.

And my G.

P. A.

Was actually 3.9 actually 3.91 point 913 Actually it was

an irrational number just kept going and going.

But so you know, I'm worth it.

Uh my height is six ft on my Tinder profile.

It's not actually true.

I'm actually 62 on my bumble.

You gotta entice people to get to know you.

And I'm actually 5 11 but in reality I'm 5

10.5. So I'm actually 36 years old as well.

Um I forgot to update my age but now that

you don't trust me at all, let's talk about comedy.

That was a joke.

You can trust me.

How does math relate to comedy?

Well um let's see math relates to everything.

Everything is in some way mathematical because there's a syntax,

there's a science to everything and therefore there's a math

to everything.

So therefore comedy is included in everything.

That's a math symbol.

Um Every comedian principle can be expressed mathematically which I'll

be doing some stuff with that today and every mathematical

principle can be turned into a joke which I do

in my stand up back.

You can check it out on Youtube if you like

Math. Comedy.

So basically math and comedy are interchangeable in that regard.

So comedy, the most basic definition I can give is

that it is a disruption of normal logic.

And what I mean by that is normal logic is

uh a implies be right.

Um If there's clouds, it might rain or if it

rains there's clouds that that's that's a logical statement in

comedy. Um Logic is like this, it's a implies zebra

with sunglasses, it's silly, it's ridiculous.

Um And if you didn't laugh at that, don't worry,

this presentation gets better.

But that's basically what comedy is, is it gives you

a surprise.

So comedy can be logical of course.

Um A logical statement can be funny if it takes

us to a conclusion we did not expect, you know,

for instance, we know what zebra is, We know that

sunglasses are, but then when you put it on the

zebra, uh suddenly he also vapes.

So you know for an example of this is a

joke I tell on stage, which is you know that

avocado is a fruit, right?

You know the tomato is a fruit, Lemon and lime

are also fruits.

Okay, so you know this, So my girlfriend got mad

because she asked me to make fruit salad for a

party. So I brought guacamole.

Okay, so all logical there, we know those things are

fruits, but we then uh see that fruit salad, guacamole

is a form of fruit salad, which is a way

that we didn't look at it before.

So that's a silly way of expressing something very logical.

Now, here's my mathematical definition of funny.

So something is funny if there exists one person who

laughs at it, it doesn't matter who that person is,

it doesn't matter where they are, as long as one

person's laughing.

Um Not including yourself.

If you laugh at it, if you laugh at something

that nobody else does.

It's not funny.

That's a mathematical statement.

So F equals the total number of people.

Uh The total number of people laughing over the total

population, Uh f is less than one.

That means that you are sorry F is strictly less

than one because you can never make everybody laugh.

That's just a rule unfunny is when something is F.

Is completely zero, and that's very rare.

Um And uh you know, if no one in the

world is laughing, you can say it's unfunny, but there's

always, you know, generally one person who find something funny,

so uh F is great, sorry F is less than

zero when no one laughs at your jokes, but you

do. So actually you lose points when you laugh at

your own joke and nobody else does.

It's extremely unfunny.

I just laughed at that too.

I hope somebody left, because otherwise it's less than zero.

So comedy equals tragedy plus time.

This is something we've all heard before, right?

A tragedy happens.

You got to give it time before it becomes funny.

Okay? But you can do some subtraction this equation.

You subtract tragedy from both sides.

You get the time equals comedy minus tragedy, which makes

sense because time flies when you're having fun and it

seems longer when it's when things are painful.

So subtract time from both statements, both sides, you get

comedy minus tragedy minus time equals zero.

Also, you can have tragedy back on both sides, you

get comedy, Comedy minus time equals tragedy, which makes sense

because comedy without good timing is pretty tragic.

Here's an example of that.

Of course I made a graph.

It's not a linear relationship between time and comedy, it's

actually cubic.

It looks something like this.

So you have the tragedy happens here.

So before that, of course, um you know, uh it's,

oh and sorry, I just want to make clear that

time is the X axis here, Comedy is the Y

axis. So as you can see here, your tragedy happens.

And before that, you know, it's funny.

It's not funny because it doesn't make sense.

Nobody knows what you would be talking about it.

You predicted tragedy.

Um and then it becomes extremely unfunny shortly after the

tragedy. Um We call this the too soon zone and

then it becomes funny again later on, after a certain

amount of time has passed.

Of course it differs for every tragedy.

But an example of this is the titanic classic tragedy,

right? Um, so before the tragedy, if you made jokes

about the titanic sinking, people would have no idea what

you're talking about.

So it wouldn't be funny.

Um you know, and then as the titanic, uh, you

know, it came out in the news, you could probably

crack some jokes.

It started to become funny if you were, you know,

predicting that it would sink and we can all laugh

at that, but then it did sink and then it

became extremely unfunny because, you know, a lot of lives

were lost.

So it was a very sad thing.

But then as a lot of time past, you suddenly

had movies that made it a lot more fun.

And then even more recently, there is an sNl sketch

where we took the side of the iceberg.

So titanic jokes are extremely funny right now.

It looks like they're only going up.

So always mind the time tragedy principle in comedy.

Um now this is a model that I created to

look at how laughter pervades in a room or in

a subset of people after as contagious as something we've

all heard.

So of course, stemming from this, I use the S.

I. R.

Modeling from the mathematics of epidemics which are very popular

right now.

S is the number of susceptible individuals, people with a

sense of humor?

I. Is the number of infected or is the number

of recovered individuals?

J. Is the number of jokes.

F. Is so funny.

The jokes are uh the ratio from the previous slide.

So we have a series of differential equations which expresses

the relationship between all these variables.

And you can solve for I have to go ahead

and wait no, okay, you can do it later for

homework, that's fine.

Um The goal in comedy is essentially to infect as

many people as possible by this model and delay their

recovering. I know that sounds really uh, I mean, but

it's ideally that's why they say in comedy are killing

it, right?

Comedy is a virus.

This is kind of the relationship between those variables.

Um, the best comedy keeps surprising the audience, therefore your

forthcoming jokes are like variance, You want to keep them

surprised and if you don't do this, the population will

reach herd immunity and you don't want that in comedy.

Of course, I'm sorry, I'm not funny anymore.

Um, okay, so uh you often hear about this thing

called the Rule of Threes.

Um, this is something they teach in every basic stand

up comedy class that when you have a premise, you

create a list and you put two regular ones and

then you put a silly one at the end and

that's how comedy works.

And I'm here to tell you that that is a

fallacy. It is actually the rule of ends.

It works for any number.

Um So, you know, you can do you certainly you've

heard those typical rule of three jokes, but I'll show

you that it works for any number of N uh

for instance, and equals one is a misdirection.

So for instance, I have a joke where I say

as a buddhist, I believe in monogamy and moderation, So

I could have just gone on with the list, but

that was just an equals one instead of listing three

things. And the third one being the silly, I just

did it in the first one.

Uh Also works for N equals two.

For instance, I have a joke where I say I'm

Palestinians, not too many people know about Palestinians because there's

only been a few famous Palestinians in history and I

guess nobody knows who they are, just yes or Arafat

and jesus.

So jesus was the punch line there, That's number two.

Um uh there's been enough time after the tragedy for

me to make that joke.

And uh again, I could have done three, I could

have put the current Prime Minister of Palestine, but I

did not, I just did n equals two.

And of course this works for any number.

And if you have a very big end, it's just

a rant where you just go on and on and

on and on and say mundane stuff until you have

a punch line at the end and people will laugh

because the rule of ends checks out no matter what

number and is uh just gotta have a punch line

at the end.

Okay, timing, of course, is very important, as we know

in comedy.

This is your audience reaction.

This is the timing of a joke.

You don't wanna do it too quickly because they're still

processing the information and you don't want to do it

too late because they're already expecting it by by it.

I mean the punch line and uh you know, when

does this come?

It's it's just a feeling you get after, you know,

studying the art of comedy for a while, but do

note the mind optimal timing.

Of course, self deprecation is very important, is to audience

reaction over self deprecation.

You come off too cocky if you start off by

not doing any kind of stepped application, but if you

do too much the audience is concerned, So keep that

in mind the optimal somewhere in between and again, you

have to feel that out and find it for yourself.

Now, of course, confidence is important in comedy and what

is confidence, but awareness of your strengths, right?

Self deprecation is awareness of your weaknesses.

So it would seem like these two things conflict, but

really there is a union between the two uh confidence.

The union of confidence and self deprecation is actually self

awareness because you're aware of strengths and weaknesses and people

generally like when you know who you are, So that's

what you keep mine now.

This shows how powerful confidences in comedy, because you can

say something with extreme confidence and it's not funny and

still get the same audience reaction as you can see

here on the graph.

The equivalent audience reaction for something very confidently said, that's

not that funny is similar to something that's very funny,

but not constantly said, of course, if you can do

both, you'll reach the outer limits of the graph so

that the key is to be confident and funny.

So uh keep that in mind now, who is a

crowd or your audience like laughing at the most?

And essentially it's always going to be you?

Um, self deprecation is important.

They want, they're listening to your story so they want

to laugh at you.

Um, they less so like laughing at themselves.

Um, of course some people do, but it's less of

a guarantee it's a safer bet to make fun of

you. However you can get a stronger reaction if you

make fun of someone else nearby.

This is something that we see with crowd work and

comedy. Of course it may not make sense for some

of your content, but sometimes if you can make some

of the fun of some of the context in a

situation, people like it even better than making fun yourself.

Now, here's a question in comedy right now that a

lot of people are wondering, can you be funny without

being offensive?

People think that these two things are mutually exclusive, you're

not offensive enough for you to offensive and you have

to be somewhere on that spectrum to be funny to

a certain group of people.

Um, when in reality funny is a whole other dimension,

it doesn't matter if your offensive or not because there's

always different people who will laugh at whatever humor you

have. And again, based on the definition from earlier, funny

is relative depending on who likes the material.

So if you're offending one group, you may not be

offending another and vice versa.

So really just find funny, don't worry about if you're

being offensive or not offensive, but I wouldn't recommend being

offensive because that could end your career.

So, uh speaking of my career, you know, as I

told you, I got degrees in Math and business and

now I'm a comedian.

So people always ask me like, what's that X Factor,

like what made you go from math and business to

comedy? And he guesses uh the answer is marijuana, that's

basically what happened.

So marijuana equals comedy minus math minus business.

If you do the subtraction that, which makes sense because

marijuana makes things funny and lessons or math and business

skills, of course business equals comedy minus Math minus marijuana

as we deduce from that previous one and business equals

comedy minus Math minus marijuana.

That makes sense because people who are going to business

are generally funny even though they may not have math

skills and they probably don't smoke marijuana because they're focused

on their business.

Hope you enjoyed that image.

So the most important thing I would say about comedy

is connection with your audience.

Of course, we've talked about self deprecation, we've talked about

timing, we've talked about how you structure your material, but

none of that really matters if you don't have a

connection with your audience.

So I actually found an equation for this.

If sees the connection to your audience and m is

the material of the strength of your material and ease

the excitement, energy of the crowd.

Essentially the crowd response.

There is a formula that defines this and that is

E equals M C squared.

Um, it is a unique formula that pertains only to

comedy, um, and I patent it too.

So don't worry about that.

So what I'm saying is if C equals zero, it

doesn't matter how big M is.

And essentially that means that funny is relative.

So I hope this, this empowers you in remembering that,

find that connection with your crowd first and then don't

worry about being funny.

The funny, the funny will just come if you are

connected with your crowd.

So, uh, got it.

So I hope you enjoy this presentation.

Um, all the slides are available for review and these

principles do check out.

I encourage you to test them whether it's in your

written content or in your speaking, um, you know, try

them out.

You know, try the real events, see what number and

you like best learn, learn the optimal timing, learned the

optimal amount of self deprecation.

It's different for every individual and it's different for every

crowd and you have to discover yourself.

But I hope these principles take you a long way.

So that said, thank you so much, Good night.

Sorry, good day.

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