Xanthippa's Chamberpot

A physicist, a mathematician and an engineer stay in a hotel.

The engineer is awakened by a smell and gets up to check it. He finds a fire in the hallway, sees a nearby fire extinguisher and after extinguishing it, goes back to bed.

Later that night, the physicist gets up, again because of the smell of fire. He quickly gets up and sees the fire in the hallway. After calculating air pressure, flame temperature and humidity as well as distance to the fire and projected trajectory, he extinguishes the fire with the least amount of fluid.

At last, the mathematician awakes, only again to find a fire in the hallway. He instantly sees the extinguisher and thinks, “A solution exists!”, and heads back into his room.

A variation on a theme:

A family practice doc, an internist, a surgeon, and a pathologist are out one day duck hunting. First up is the FP doc – he raises his gun to take aim at a flock of birds passing overhead and says to himself, “Looks like a duck, flies like a duck, quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.” BANG! He bags himself a duck.

The internist then steps up, raises his gun to take aim at a second flock of birds flying overhead. He says to himself, “Looks like a duck, flies like a duck, quacks like a duck, rule out quail, rule out pheasant, goose versus duck likely.” BANG! He, too, bags himself a duck.

A third flock of birds then flies overhead and the surgeon steps up and raises his gun at the flock. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! He fires multiple rounds at the flock and dead birds are dropping all around. The surgeon lowers his gun, walks over to one of the dead birds, picks it up, hands it to the pathologist and says, “Tell me if this is a duck.”