Comics about mathematics, science, and the student life.

Idea Diffusion

Diffusion of dots from left to right across a membrane. On the left, there is a bunch of dots representing "My beautiful ideas". On the right, there are only a few dots, representing "What ends up working". The membrane is the reality filter.

“Why does that pesky membrane have to be there at all?!”

“Maybe because it protects us from all your bad ideas as well?”

16 Nov 2024

Notation Conflicts

A pie chart of writing a paper. A small section involves writing the paper. The bulk is for fixing notation conflicts.

Why can’t everyone just read my mind and not worry about the bad notation?!

09 Nov 2024

Low-Hanging Fruit

A graph of "Low-hanging fruit" versus "Popularity of a field". When a field isn't popular, there's a ton of low-hanging fruit. As the field becomes more popular though, that kind of fruit diminishes.

“But how will I know if the unpopular field I choose will have good, important fruit?”

“And that’s why you’ve got to be in it for the fruit itself, not what anyone else says.”

27 Oct 2024

Slippery Slope

A graph of Mood versus Negativity. The graph depicts a plateau with a steep cliff. You're walking on the plateau towards the slope, and a good friend is there to point behind you and say, "Let's go *that* way."

And you can bring the same gift to your friends.

19 Oct 2024

Regression to the Mean

Left panel: A professor is writing on the board and a student asks, "Professor, can you write a bit bigger?" They say "Sure!" Right panel: The text on the board says "Let x be a random..." The writing gets smaller and smaller until its illegible gibberish.

The recurrences in writing size are a direct imprint of the persistence of students sitting beyond the front row.

12 Oct 2024

Games

A Venn diagram of "Games you're good at" and "Good games to play". The intersection is where to focus.

Note: Those good games to play depend on you, not just on what everyone else tells you.

05 Oct 2024

Staring Into The Distance

A graph of "Staring into the distance" versus "How deep you are in a math problem". As you go deeper, you end up staring into the distance far more.

“You’re not listening to me. Are you thinking about your math problem again?”

“…No, I’m just looking at something.”

“What? There’s nothing in front of you.”

“Sure there is. I’m staring at…uh, that point at infinity!”

28 Sep 2024

Timeline Accuracy

A graph of "Accuracy in predicting timelines" versus "Stress". As the accuracy increases, stress decreases.

“I’m super accurate in predicting how long it will take me to finish things!”

“Oh, really?”

“Sure, after the fourth or fifth revision, I’m superb.”

21 Sep 2024

Remarkable Opportunity

A high jump setup with three bars. The highest one (dashed line) is what we imagine the bar for remarkable is. The much lower middle bar is in reality, and below that is where most work lands.

That little extra effort matters.

14 Sep 2024

Mathematical Gems

A shiny mathematical gem lies deep below the Earth. Between the surface and the gem is a thick layer of technical jargon, including research papers, presentations, and small veins of exposition. A person has a shovel while their friend says, "Have fun digging!"

As Ben Orlin says, some people never get to see the beauty of those gems.

07 Sep 2024