Late April, Early May Math Comics

I’ve got enough new mathematics-themed comic strips to assemble them into a fresh post. It’s a challenge to time these rightly; I don’t want to waste everyone’s time with a set weekly post, particularly since the syndicated comics might just not have anything. On the other hand, waiting until a set number of strips have passed before my eyes seems likely to just encourage me to wonder how marginally a strip can touch mathematics before I include it. Dave Coverly’s Speed Bump, from the 6th of May, is a fine marginal case: there’s a mathematics problem in it, but it’s not at all a mathematics strip. It’s just very easy to put a math problem on the chalkboard and have it be understood the scenario is “student with no idea how to answer”.

Brevity, a panel strip drawn by “Guy and Rodd and Dan” — Guy Endore-Kaiser and Rodd Perry, plus Dan Thompson of the spoof action-adventure serial Rip Haywire — put in a more specific than average dog-eating-homework gag for the 23rd of April.

Bizarro, by Dan Piraro, put on the 3rd of May the kind of Math joke that’s designed to go on the bulletin boards around people who insist you have to know how to do arithmetic for your daily life. I’m kind of surprised how few people referred me to it.

Jumble put in a math-themed puzzle on the 21st of April along with a look that feels terribly familiar to me. It’s less directly a mathematics-themed strip but on the 3rd of May a mention of “renal calculus” made the comic panel. I’m going to suppose this is a matter of just throwing together amusing-sounding words and not meant to suggest something about the authors’ opinions regarding calculus.

I’m aware of xkcd for the 7th of May, but if I list every xkcd with some math-related content I’ll run out of room for other things.