Notational Bankruptcy

A mathematician looks at his friend while shaking an upside-down "Symbols" bucket. He says, "You ran out of symbols again?! I jut got you a new alphabet!" She shrugs and tells him, "My math is involved."

“Maybe you should go to the linguistics department.”

01 May 2024

Utilize

A poster saying "Wanted. Any instances of 'Utilize'. For needlessly bloating discourse."

I spent the whole afternoon putting these posters up around town, and then somebody brought them all back to me the next day. What’s up with that?

24 Apr 2024

Scarcity Mindset

A person chases a butterfly with a net. He says, "Can't let this first one get away!" Caption: Scarcity Mindset.

I must often remind myself that there will be more opportunities.

17 Apr 2024

Bounds

A Venn diagram of "Upper Bounds" and "Lower Bounds". The small intersection represents over 90% of mathematics education.

Another entry in the “Distorted Prevalence of Mathematical Concepts” collection, beside “Closed Form Answers”.

10 Apr 2024

Powerhouse

A science communication teacher says to their class, "And as a final reminder to all you budding science communicators: avoid clichés like the plague. (Pause) Except?" The class responds enthusiastically, "The mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell!" The teacher: "I've taught you well."

If you hear the word “powerhouse”, we’re either talking about mitochondria or sports.

03 Apr 2024

Research Career Roadmap

A recipe for a research career. Step 1: Invent a new technique (represented by a triangle). Step 2: Apply it to all of the previous literature. Step 3: Exploit combinatorial explosion.

Then come up with a slightly modified version of your original technique and repeat!

27 Mar 2024

Friends

A graph of "Ability to get out of your head" versus "Friends". As you get more friends, it's easier to get out of your head.

Likewise, be that person for someone else.

20 Mar 2024

URLs

Left panel (In the past): A person walks up to a signpost that clearly says, "website.com/post". They say, "Ah, that's where I'm going!" Right panel (Now): The person approaches a much larger signpost, which says, "website.com/redirect/68arbxQ-13flGB73r-b7wTFz8XDghbMpfeU4ovL9j..." They say, "Where the hell is this?!"

Am I the only one who likes to know where I’m going when I click a link?

13 Mar 2024

Lead By Example

A long procession of cars is behind me, with several of them honking and beeping. The caption: Me, helping everyone follow the speed limit.

Leaders are always misunderstood.

06 Mar 2024

Calendar Ping Pong

A classic game of "Pong", but the two paddles represent my calendar and your calendar. There are a lot of exchanges.

If the rally goes on too long for a time-sensitive issue, the issue goes away!

28 Feb 2024

To the past To the present