Reading the Comics, May 29, 2018: Finding Reruns Edition


There were a bunch of mathematically-themed comic strips this past week. A lot of them are ones I’d seen before. One of them is a bit risque and I’ve put that behind a cut. This saves me the effort of thinking up a good nonsense name to give this edition, so there’s that going for me too.

Bill Amend’s FoxTrot Classics for the 24th of May ought to have run last Sunday, but I wasn’t able to make time to write about it. It’s part of a sequence of Jason tutoring Paige in geometry. She’s struggling with the areas of common shapes which is relatable. Many of these area formulas could be kept straight by thinking back to rectangles. The size of the area is equal to the length of the base times the length of the height. From that you could probably reason right away the area of a trapezoid. It would have the same area as a rectangle with a base of length the mean length of the trapezoid’s different-length sides. The parallelogram works like the rectangle, length of the base times the length of the height. That you can convince yourself of by imagining the parallelogram. Then imagine slicing a right triangle off one of its sides. Move that around to the other side. Put it together right and you have a rectangle. Already know the area of a rectangle. The triangle, then, you can get by imagining two triangles of the same size and shape. Rotate one of the triangles 180 degrees. Slide it over, so the two triangles touch. Do this right and you have a parallelogram and so you know the area. The triangle’s half the area of that parallelogram.

Paige: 'OK, let me see if I've got these area formulas memorized. For a triangle, it's 1/2 bh. For a trapezoid, it's 1/2 (a + b)h. And for a circle, it's pi r^2.' Jason: 'Yes! Yes! Yes! You got them all right! You're going to ace this test! I'm going to make $10!' Paige: 'I always get confused --- does h stand for my height or the triangle's? ... Just kidding.' Jason: 'WILL YOU QUIT TOYING WITH ME?!'
Bill Amend’s FoxTrot Classics for the 24th of May, 2018. It originally ran the 30th of May, 1996.

The circle, I don’t know. I think just remember that if someone says “pi” they’re almost certainly going to follow it with either “r squared” or “day”. One of those suggests an area; the other doesn’t. Best I can do.

Jeri: 'Arrrrhh'. Teena: 'Sup?' Jeri: 'I'm having issues with this math issue. It's the way they phrase these word things. They're like trick questions. I can never figure them out.' Teena: 'Here, let me see what you're having trouble with. ... 'Sarah sits next to Stephen, who is very good at algebra. This causes Sarah, who has issues with BOTH Steven AND algebra, to feel bad But if Sarah moves next to someone else, Steven will feel bad. How do you protect Sarah's and Steven's self-esteem?' Jeri: 'I'm not that comfortable with my answer.' Teena: 'Which is?' Jeri: 'Eleven.' Teena: 'It must be very interesting in your school.'
Allison Barrows’s PreTeena rerun for the 27th of May, 2018. It originally ran the 15th of February, 2004.

Allison Barrows’s PreTeena rerun for the 27th discusses self-esteem as though it were a good thing that children ought to have. This is part of the strip’s work to help build up the Old Person Complaining membership that every comics section community group relies on. But. There is mathematics in Jeri’s homework. Not mathematics in the sense of something particular to calculate. There’s just nothing to do there. But it is mathematics, and useful mathematics, to work out the logic of how to satisfy multiple requirements. Or, if it’s impossible to satisfy them all at once, then to come as near satisfying them as possible. These kinds of problems are considered optimization or logistics problems. Most interesting real-world examples are impossibly hard, or at least become impossibly hard before you realize it. You can make a career out of doing as best as possible in the circumstances.

Charles Schulz’s Peanuts rerun for the 27th features an extended discussion by Lucy about the nature of … well, she explicitly talks about “nothing”. Is she talking about zero? Probably; you have to get fairly into mathematics or philosophy to start worrying about the difference between the number zero and the idea of nothing. In Algebra, mathematicians learn to work with systems of things that work like numbers enough that you can add and subtract and multiply them together, without committing to the idea that they’re working with numbers. They will have something that works like zero, though, a “nothing” that can be added to or subtracted from anything without changing it. And for which multiplication turns something into that “nothing”.

Charlie Brown, at Lucy's Psychiatric Help 5 cents booth: 'I always wanted to go up to that little red-haired girl and talk to her, but I just couldn't. I couldn't start a conversation because I was such a nothing and she was something. If she had wanted to talk to me, it would have been easy because someone who is really something can just go right up to someone who is nothing, and just talk.' Lucy: 'I think your problem is mathematical, Charlie Brown.' Charlie Brown: 'Mathematical?' Lucy: 'If you add nothing and something, what do you get?' Charlie Brown: 'Something, I guess.' Lucy: 'Right ... now, if you subtract nothing from something, what do you get?' Charlie Brown: 'Something.' Lucy: 'Very good ... now, if you multiply something by nothing, what do you get?' Charlie Brown: 'Nothing.' Lucy: 'Five cents, please.' Charlie Brown: 'When you're a nothing, you have a hard time understanding anything!'
Charles Schulz’s Peanuts rerun for the 27th of May, 2018. It originally ran the 30th of May, 1971. This strip originally ran during a time when, in-continuity, the Little Red-Haired Girl had moved away and Charlie Brown was coping with having never spoken to her. At some point she moved back, possibly because Schulz felt he had done everything he could with that or possibly because he forgot she had moved away.

I’m with Charlie Brown in not understanding where Lucy was going with all this, though. Maybe she lost the thread herself.

Mark Anderson’sAndertoons for the 28th is Mark Anderson’sAndertoons for the week. Wavehead’s worried about the verbs of both squaring and rounding numbers. Will say it’s a pair of words with contrary alternate meanings that I hadn’t noticed before. I have always taken the use of “square” to reflect, well, if you had a square with sides of size 4, then you’d have a square with area of size 16. The link seems obvious and logical. So on reflection that’s probably not at all where English gets it from. I mean, not to brag or anything but I’ve been speaking English all my life. If I’ve learned anything about it, it’s that the origin is probably something daft like “while Tisquantum [Squanto] was in England he impressed locals with his ability to do arithmetic and his trick of multiplying one number by itself got nicknamed squantuming, which got shortened to squaning to better fit the meter in a music-hall song about him, and a textbook writer in 1704 thought that was a mistake and `corrected’ it to squaring and everyone copied that”. I’m not even going to venture a guess about the etymology of “rounding”.

On the board: 2^2 = 4, 3^2 = 9, 4^2 = 16. Wavehead: 'Wait, we're squaring numbers now? We just figured out how to round them!'
Mark Anderson’sAndertoons for the 28th of May, 2018. But why would the examples be written out before the students were told what the were doing?

Marguerite Dabaie and Tom Hart’s Ali’s House for the 28th sets up a homework-help session over algebra. Can’t say where exactly Maisa is going wrong. Her saying “x equals 30 but the train equals” looks like trouble to me. It’s often good practice to start by writing out what are the things in the problem that seem important. And what symbol one wants each to mean. And what one knows about the relationship between these things. It helps clarify why someone would want to do that instead of something else. This is a new comic strip tag and I don’t think I’ve ever had cause to discuss it before.

Maisa: 'Can you help me with my homework?' Sahib: 'Dad promised me a hamburger.' Maisa: 'You see - x equals 30 but the train equals ... ' Sahib: 'Dad never makes hamburgers ... mutter mutter mutter.' Maisa: 'Look, I really need help with this.' Sahib: 'My brain isn't set on pay attention my brain is set on burger!'
Marguerite Dabaie and Tom Hart’s Ali’s House for the 28th of May, 2018. Relatable.

Hilary Price’s Rhymes With Orange for the 29th is a Rubik’s Cube joke. I’ve counted that as mathematical enough, usually. The different ways that you can rotate parts of the cube form a group. This is something like what I mentioned in the Peanuts discussion. The different rotations you can do can be added to or subtracted from each other, the way numbers can. (Multiplication I’m wary about.)

Rubik's Headquarters. It's a three-by-three wireframe with tiny offices inside. Person looking in: 'My corner office ... gone! I hate when they do a management shuffle.' [ Title panel, Other person: 'Rumor has it they're going to an open-concept model.' ]
Hilary Price’s Rhymes With Orange for the 29th of May, 2018. Pity whoever gets the center office, bottom layer.

And now here’s the strip that is unsuitable for reading at work, owing to the appearance of an undressed woman.


Female mathematician: 'You know, Dr Loring, there's more to life than math.' Loring looks up from his frustrated board and watches the woman strip. He sees her as a set of geometric figures and algebraic symbols.
Nicholas Gurewitch’s Perry Bible Fellowship rerun for the 28th of May, 2018. I can’t say what Dr Loring’s difficulty is, but I will say, if he tries trigonometric substitution I bet it won’t help a bit.

Nicholas Gurewitch’s Perry Bible Fellowship rerun for the 28th is one that has turned up here before. That time I discussed its graphic design. Mathematical symbols have this neat shape to them, and they can be beautiful just to watch. It’s easy to lose oneself in.

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Author: Joseph Nebus

I was born 198 years to the day after Johnny Appleseed. The differences between us do not end there. He/him.

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