Ok, so apparently there is an old joke (which I DO get) that says that in Hungary a mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
I found a post by Qiaochu Yuan that has the following definiton: A comathematician is a device for turning cotheorems into ffee.
Apparently this is a very funny joke. Could someone explain it to me and tell me where I could learn about the subject in question? Thank you very much in advance.
Regards.
A category consists of objects and arrows between them (which can be associatively composed).
We can express various constructions and theorems with the help of categories, and when we switch the direction of all arrows, we arrive to the dual constructions and dual theorems, which are usually named by the prefix 'co', and which stay valid, as the proof/construction must go through with the reversed arrows the same way.
For example, the coproduct, i.e. the dual of the cartesian product of sets (in the category of sets and functions) is the disjoint union operation.
Of course, taking the dual is involutive, that is, 'co(co X)=X' whatever X is. That's why the dual of coffee is 'ffee', so the 'definition' of the comathematician is just the dual statement of the old joke.