Comics about mathematics, science, and the student life.

Motto

A grad student talks to a new student. She says, "Welcome to the group! Here's our motto." The student reads the motto on his phone: "I thought this would be easier."? She says, "You'll learn quickly."

“By the time you’ve graduated from the group, you won’t think anything is easy!”

12 Jul 2023

Rare Events

A density graph of conversation quality. Most conversations are of low quality but there are some outliers. There's an arrow pointing to those outliers with the text, "Take the time to appreciate them".

Good conversations are so nourishing.

10 Jul 2023

Academic Websites

A density graph of the quality of academic websites. Most of the weight is near the low end labelled "archaic", and there's a small tail of better websites.

I think the design has improved in recent years, but this may be biased by which academics I look up!

07 Jul 2023

Language Barrier

Two bar graphs that represent the amount of time for the activity. The large bar on the left represents "Figuring out how to speak the same language" and the much smaller bar on the right is "Doing the science". Caption: Collaborations.

“Isn’t mathematics supposed to be the language of science?”

“Yes, but then everybody came up with their own words to describe the same thing.”

05 Jul 2023

Obscure Code

A man visits his scientist friend and sees her piling a bunch of boxes on top of each other. They have labels such as, "Dependency", "Dep 2", "Dep 3", "Dep 4", "Obscure library", "Old code", "Code". He asks, "What are you doing?" She replies, "My research problem is so obscure and tricky that the only code for it is decades old."

This actually happens.

03 Jul 2023

Records

An alien spaceship is quickly leaving Earth. One of the aliens says, "I never thought I'd say this, but this planet has too many records..." Another says, "Let's go find a planet that preserves *important* things."

I’ve wondered for a while now if the sheer quantity of data will overwhelm the speedups that come with better organization and search. Will future people studying humans of this era be able to wade through all the data with ease?

30 Jun 2023

Workflow

Two friends walk together. One tells her friend, "I've found a workflow to double my speed." He replies, "So you're going to use those savings to relax?" She lifts her arms in the air and says, "What? No, I'm going to do even more!"

“I want to do something useful, you know.”

28 Jun 2023

Under a Rock

Headshots of four people scattered from each other, each encircled. Caption: Filter bubbles let us all live under our own rock.

“Wait, how have you not heard of X?!” is a question that you can find people asking for basically any X.

26 Jun 2023

Textbook Knowledge

An expanding area represents all knowledge. A very small portion inside it represents your textbook.

In other words: Do spend some time outside the boundaries of your textbook.

23 Jun 2023

Incentive

Two graduate students are in their office. One turns, looks to the other, and asks her, "So you signed up for the free food?" She looks back and clarifies, "Um, you mean the scientific workshop?" He answers, "Sure, that'll be nice too."

“I scope out my seminars by food availability.”

21 Jun 2023