dtgreene: Which is bigger, pi or 3,141?
Which is bigger, pi or 3.141?
StarChan: The first one is the number, the second one is pi (at least 0.0005 bigger).
But if this is a joke and not a riddle, perhaps it's not supposed to be answered? Or perhaps the joke kicks in if I answer incorrectly, because then the joke is on me ..
Somebody in the US would say, "Of course pi (~3.1415) > 3.141, and 3,141 (three thousand one hundred forty-one) > pi".
Someone from elsewhere in the world will say "Of course pi (~3,1415) > 3,141 and 3.141 (three thousand one hundred forty one) > pi".
In other words, the (obvious) answers will be different depending on how one's region treats commas and periods in numbers.
dtgreene: "I ain't got no piece of paper."
*provides a piece of paper anyway*
StarChan: Grammar can be so much fun :p
In Standard English, two double negatives cancel each other out and yield a positive. the sentence I gave has two negatives, "ain't" and "no", which in Standard English, cancel each other out. In other words, this statement is saying that I *do* have a piece of paper.
However, "ain't" ain't Standard English, and it turns out that, in dialects where "ain't" is used, double negatives don't work the same way! There's apparently a song whose title starts with "I Ain't Got No Home", where the lyrics describe the singer as wandering around.
In other words, there is no dialect of English, to my knowledge, in which double negatives cancel out and "ain't" is a word.
(Exercise for the reader (non-trivial): Translate this joke into a language other than English.)