Lookup

A professor stands in front of her blackboard and tells the class, "Welcome to Differential Equations, where we'll take a semester to download a lookup table to your brain!"

“Yes, I know the transfer is slow. We haven’t figured out a better way to do this yet.”

P.S. Hat tip to John Cook’s blog post that inspired this comic.

24 Oct 2022

Diversity

A scientist hands his proposal to a fellow colleague and says, "Here's my interdisciplinary project proposal." She looks at it and says, "Um, every scientist here has the word 'physicist' in it." He answers, "But they all have a different adjective in front. What else could I have done?"

“Wait, you wanted me to work with scientists who aren’t physicists?!”

21 Oct 2022

Arbitrary

A collection of dots representing people. Then, there's a line that cuts the space in half with the label, "Arbitrary Classifying Line". There are dots which land directly on the line, and there's a caption that reads, "Suddenly, things become harder."

Classification is easy until you run up against the arbitrariness of a definition.

19 Oct 2022

Scaling Gains

A scientist tells a theorist and a businessperson about their latest work. "I just improved the algorithm's scaling from one polynomial to a slightly smaller one." The theorist replies, "Worth a paper." The businessperson shouts, "I'll give you a milli--wait. I'll get you a paper."

Actually, I just listened to a nice presentation by Jean-Gabriel Young who referred to a N² algorithm as “bad”. So maybe my focus on theoretical computational complexity is just making me picky…

17 Oct 2022

Outliers

A density plot of "Stubbornness and persistence", in the shape of a normal distribution. To the far right are the outliers, where there's a label: Scientists and runners.

Who else is way out here?

14 Oct 2022

The Weight of Expectations

Two friends are speaking. One friend asks, "Do you really want to carry that?" She's referring to a huge box labelled "Internal Pressure and Perfectionism" that her friend is carrying. He replies, "I...have no choice."

“I have to be the best.”

“Why?”

Pause. “I just have to be.”

12 Oct 2022

Working Reality

A bar chart. The tall left bar says, "Times I think something will work". The smaller right bar says, "In reality".

“It’s going to work. It’s going to work!” (Pause) “It didn’t work.”

10 Oct 2022

Execution

On the left, a person is thinking about their perfect idea. On the right, there is a slightly mangled object. The person says, "Here's what I made." There's a "less than" symbol between the two scenarios, showing that it's always better to ship.

If it doesn’t exist in the world, then it may as well not even be in your mind. Execution is key.

07 Oct 2022

Arrival

A mountain in the shape of a staircase. At each step is a person looking up at the person above them. Everyone is thinking the same thing: "I'll be happy when I get to where they are."

Be wary of trying to “arrive”.

05 Oct 2022

Just Smart Enough

A graph of "Danger" versus "Knowledge". The curve starts off with low danger, then peaks, then decays with a long tail. At the peak, there's a label which says, "Just enough to be dangerous."

“No, you don’t understand. I know what I’m talking about!”

03 Oct 2022

To the past To the present