Well, with the caveat that the surest way to kill humor is to explain it, I thought it was funny because option 1 was a super-simple equation, option 2 was a super-simple equation, and the "right" answer was Quantum Rocket Surgery.

(I suppose it's funnier if you've done research. Roughly 88.69% of all research literature is some dude trying to "improve" a simple model with pages of mathematics. Not that this guy was wrong -- it was just evocative.)