Comics about mathematics, science, and the student life.

Recall

A professor stands at the board and asks students to recall a previous theorem. The truth is that this is often done on faith, since students don't remember the result.

“I’m sure you all remember how to prove this result.”

20 May 2019

Pseudowork

The first panel shows a researcher thinking about new problems to solve. The second panel shows them searching online in order to ask for citations. Work versus pseudowork.

I can kind of understand why people do this, but really, it’s not the work you should be spending your precious time on.

17 May 2019

Probabilistic Multiple Choice

A student thinks about the multiple choice question they have, and reasons using Bayes' theorem that it can't be A, so the answer must be B.

It’s amazing the amount of “bad” answers you can eliminate just by using the fact that your teacher is making a test.

15 May 2019

One Up

Two students compare how much studying they do as if the more hours one studies, the better they are.

Personally, I enjoy being able to say I study less than others.

13 May 2019

Fooling Ourselves

A student finishes a section of their workout slower than expected, but asks their coach to let them run faster. The coach decides that somehow they should be able to run faster, even though it's clear they won't.

Nothing gets me more fired up than those who ignore the fact that students move on in mathematics when they aren’t ready.

10 May 2019

Perturbation Theory

A friend asks a physicist what they're doing. It's perturbation theory, which works kind of like shipping software at a version 1.0, and slowly incrementing.

“When do you expect to get to version 1.1?”

“I don’t know, but the person who can figure it out will probably win a Nobel Prize!”

08 May 2019

Gooey

A student working at their desk tells their friend that the "gooey" (GUI) they are working with is great, but the friend doesn't know what in the world a "gooey" is.

It doesn’t make it easier that we seem to have a somewhat arbitrary application of this. We articulate NSERC, and LaTeX, but we spell out acronyms like UK or EU.

06 May 2019

Periodic Decay

A student can't believe they have to pay for their driving licence each year.

This lesson is made even more acutely when you’re a student.

03 May 2019

For The Exam

In the first panel, the student pushes a rock ("test material") up a hill towards a sign that says "Long-Term Memory". They are almost there, but since the test goes by, they decide to let go of the rock, and it rolls away, not getting stored into the long-term memory.

“I was never really going to use this stuff anyway, so I actually dodged a bullet!”

01 May 2019

I'll Understand Later

The student sits at their desk, confused about a concept from their texbook, but reasons that they will figure it out later.

This works well when reading fiction, but textbook authors have an annoying habit of repeatedly referring to past material without giving the full explanation again, so it pays to take it slow.

29 Apr 2019