“That joke is kind of weird that way,” Mr. Malow said. “We have that traditional image of an astronomer. Astronomers should work at night, theoretically. It’s fun to say that.”

Mr. Malow said that he expected the science comedy field to grow. “That won’t be a niche at all,” he said. “That’ll be too broad. It’ll be, ‘I just do humor about the spleen.’ ”

Still, linear regression and ocean acidification are rarely fodder for standup, as they were for Dr. Lee in his New York City debut at a small venue called the Monkey in Gramercy last Wednesday, seven years after walking into the Laundromat. (He returns to New York this week for two more nights of shows at the Monkey.)

“My act is a parody of a seminar,” he said. “I think my audience is everyone from age 14 who is kind of nerdy to age 65 who is kind of nerdy.”

He joked about linear regression (a rumination about what kind of people post cat videos on YouTube), period doubling in chaos (which he likens to the splitting of behaviors of people as they become more and more drunk) and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

He explained this fundamental concept of quantum physics  that the more precisely the position of a particle is measured, the less is known about the particle’s momentum, and vice versa  with a photograph of a men’s room with television screens above the urinals. The designer “clearly didn’t understand the uncertainty principle,” Dr. Lee said.

“The problem is the more I know what’s on TV,” he went on, “the less I know about where I’m aiming.”