Comics about mathematics, science, and the student life.

Supervisor Choice

Student: "Okay, time to find a supervisor for the next several years. I need to make sure we are a good fit beyond superficial reasons...OOh, this person has a cool website, so they must be good!"

I can’t be the only one who uses this criterion!

17 Feb 2020

Exhaustion

Student 1: "I heard this guy's nickname is Professor Exhaustion." Student 2: "Because his class if tiring?" S1: "No, because he likes to prove everything by exhaustion." (Door of classroom is ajar, in which the professor is speaking) "Let's check that 6079 is prime by going through cases!"

He also doesn’t believe in exhaustion, since you can’t check each case. Nor is he a fan of the continuum.

14 Feb 2020

Proof By Previous Result

Student 1: "That last proof was difficult, right?" Student 2: "Not really. It was like three lines." S1: "Only three!? Mine took a whole page! What technique did you use." S2: "'Proof by quoting a previous result.'"

“To prove this statement, I invoke Theorem 3.2 of our textbook in conjunction with Corollary 67.1, which together implies our result trivially.”

12 Feb 2020

Spin

Left panel (Politician): "We may have lost the battle, but we will win the war!" Right panel (Scientist, after a null result): "This might seem like a disappointment, but it's still a good thing. As long as get more money." Caption: No matter your job, humans are always good at putting a spin on things.

The side job of a scientist is being a public advocate for science anyway. I guess we are close to politicians after all.

10 Feb 2020

Reasonable Assumptions

Left panel (Your paper): "As you can see, my paper uses the regular assumptions." (Points to pi = e = 3, and the small angle approximation.) Right panel (Other papers): "What?! This author is assuming that N^2 - 1 = N^2 when N = 10^6. What a ridiculous assumption!"

I just try to be unreasonable all the time. Much easier to be consistent.

07 Feb 2020

Typographical Miss

Student: "Wow, I can't believe the author added so many problems that differ by a single number. Some poor souls are going to do the wrong one for the assignment." (Half an hour later) "Damn it!"

As you might imagine, this is definitely based on a true story. I mean come on, the problem was identical to the previous, save one number.

05 Feb 2020

Question Period

Professor: "...and that completes the proof. Any questions?" (Three microseconds later) "Okay great, let's move on!"

“You just told me I had to give the students a chance to ask questions, not that they actually needed to!”

03 Feb 2020

Usual Approximations

Professor: "Since this class has both a mathematics and physics course code, I made two tests."

“Basically, I know you mathematicians enjoy solving the more general case, so I figured you would like the challenge!”

31 Jan 2020

Data Generators

Researcher 1: "So Professor, how are the experiments coming along?" Researcher 2: "Not so great. The data generators are dreadfully slow." R1: "The data generators... Wait, are you talking about your grad students?" R2: "Isn't that what I said?"

“I don’t think that’s the correct term to use-“

“Okay fine, the data farmers are slow. Happy now?”

29 Jan 2020

Temporary Amnesia

Professor: "Welcome to your first 'real' course in mathematics! If you thought proofs were basically an exercise in saying, 'Let's temporarily pretend we don't know what the answer will be,' well you were correct."

The difficultly with proofs at first is that you’re required to show things that feel obvious. A good proof should provide an explanation for something which isn’t clear. Unfortunately, when you start proving divisibility rules, there’s a limit to how much insight you get from the proof.

27 Jan 2020