## Reading the Comics, July 13, 2019: Marginal Supplemental Edition

So last week there were only a handful of comic strips which mentioned mathematics in any detail. That is, that brought up some point that I could go on about for a paragraph or so. There were more that had some marginal mathematics content. I gather them here for the interested.

Gordon Bess’s Redeye rerun for the 7th mentions mathematics as the homework that the chief is helping his son with. It could be any subject, but arithmetic is easy to fit into one panel of comic strip. And it’s also easy to establish that the work is on a low level. The comic originally ran the 18th of February, 1973.

Bob Shannon’s Tough Town for the 7th has an appearance by a Rubik’s Cube. I’m always going on about that as a group theory artifact.
Tough Town on the 9th also mentioned algebra as a tough subject for students.

John Allen’s Nest Heads for the 10th mentions sudoku. Also the trouble with accounting.

John McPherson’s Close to Home for the 11th mentions percentages. The joke’s built on doing a meaningless calculation. And a bit of convention, in which the label has been reduced to the point people could mis-read it. You just know this guy would tell the “scanner didn’t pick it up, it must be free” joke if he thought of it that fast.

Paige Braddock’s Jane’s World for the 11th is part of a sequence from 2002 in which Jane concludes the problems in her life came from the introduction of algebra. Her niece is having fun with algebra, a thing I understand. Algebra can be a more playful, explorative kind of mathematics than you get with, like, long division. For some people it’s liberating. This one’s a new tag, so I’m sure to be surprised that I have ever mentioned Jane’s World sometime in the future.

Wiley Miller’s Non Sequitur for the 11th presents a Sphere of Serenity. Or, as Danae’s horse points out, a Cube of Serenity. There are ways that the difference between a sphere and a cube becomes nothing. If the cube and the sphere have infinitely great extent, for example, then there’s no observable difference between the shapes. Or if we use certain definitions of distance then the sphere — as in, the points all an equal distance from a center — can be indistinguishable from a cube. That’s not what the comic is going for.

There were no comic strips with any mathematical content last Saturday, it turns out. There have already been a couple comic strips I think I can discuss. One comic strip, anyway. I should have my essay about it for eager readers on Sunday. Thanks for your patience.

## Reading the Comics, January 30, 2019: Interlude Edition

I think there are just barely enough comic strips from the past week to make three essays this time around. But one of them has to be a short group, only three comics. That’ll be for the next essay when I can group together all the strips that ran in February. One strip that I considered but decided not to write at length about was Ed Allison’s dadaist Unstrange Phenomena for the 28th. It mentions Roman Numerals and the idea of sneaking message in through them. But that’s not really mathematics. I usually enjoy the particular flavor of nonsense which Unstrange Phenomena uses; you might, too.

John McPherson’s Close to Home for the 29th uses an arithmetic problem as shorthand for an accomplished education. The problem is solvable. Of course, you say. It’s an equation with quadratic polynomial; it can hardly not be solved. Yes, fine. But McPherson could easily have thrown together numbers that implied x was complex-valued, or had radicals or some other strange condition. This is one that someone could do in their heads, at least once they practiced in mental arithmetic.

I feel reasonably confident McPherson was just having a giggle at the idea of putting knowledge tests into inappropriate venues. So I’ll save the full rant. But there is a long history of racist and eugenicist ideology that tried to prove certain peoples to be mentally incompetent. Making an arithmetic quiz prerequisite to something unrelated echoes that. I’d have asked McPherson to rework the joke to avoid that.

(I’d also want to rework the composition, since the booth, the swinging arm, and the skirted attendant with the clipboard don’t look like any tollbooth I know. But I don’t have an idea how to redo the layout so it’s more realistic. And it’s not as if that sort of realism would heighten the joke.)

Zach Weinersmith’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal for the 29th riffs on the problem of squaring the circle. This is one of three classical problems of geometry. The lecturer describes it just fine: is it possible to make a square that’s got the same area as a given circle, using only straightedge and compass? There are shapes it’s easy to do this for, such as rectangles, parallelograms, triangles, and (why not?) this odd crescent-moon shaped figure called the lune. Circles defied all attempts. In the 19th century mathematicians found ways to represent the operations of classical geometry with algebra, and could use the tools of algebra to show squaring the circle was impossible. The squaring would be equivalent to finding a polynomial, with integer coefficients, that has $\sqrt{\pi}$ as a root. And we know from the way algebra works that this can’t be done. So squaring the circle can’t be done.

The lecturer’s hack, modifying the compass and straightedge, lets you in principle do whatever you want. The hack isn’t new either. Modifying the geometric tools changes what you can and can’t do. The Ancient Greeks recognized that adding some specialized tools would make the problem possible. But that falls outside the scope of the problem.

Which feeds to the secondary joke, of making the philosophers sad. Often philosophy problems test one’s intuition about an idea by setting out a problem, often with unpleasant choices. A common problem with students that I’m going ahead and guessing are engineers is then attacking the setup of the question, trying to show that the problem couldn’t actually happen. You know, as though there were ever a time significant numbers of people were being tied to trolley tracks. (By the way, that thing about silent movie villains tying women to railroad tracks? Only happened in comedies spoofing Victorian melodramas. It’s always been a parody.) Attacking the logic of a problem may make for good movie drama. But it makes for a lousy student and a worse class discussion.

Ted Shearer’s Quincy rerun for the 30th uses a bit of mathematics and logic talk. It circles the difference between the feeling one can have about the rational meaning of a situation and how the situation feels to someone. It seems like a jump that Quincy goes from being asked about logic to talking about arithmetic. Possibly Quincy’s understanding of logic doesn’t start from the sort of very abstract concept that makes arithmetic hard to get to, though.

There should be another Reading the Comics post this week. It should be here, when it appears. There should also be one on Sunday, as usual.

## Reading the Comics, July 17, 2018: These Are Comic Strips Edition

Some of the comics last week don’t leave me much to talk about. Well, there should be another half-dozen comics under review later in the week. You’ll stick around, won’t you please?

Anthony Blades’s Bewley for the 16th is a rerun, and an old friend. It’s appeared the 14th of August, 2016, and in April 2015 and in May 2013. Maybe it’s time I dropped the strip from my reading. The scheme by which the kids got the right answer out of their father is a variation on the Clever Hans trick. Clever Hans was a famous example of animal perception: the horse appeared to be able to do arithmetic, tapping his hoof to signal a number. Brilliant experimental design found what was going on. Not that the horse was clever enough to tell (to make up an example) 18 divided by 3. But that the horse was clever enough to recognize the slight change in his trainer’s expression when he had counted off six. Animals (besides humans) do have some sense of numbers, but not that great a sense.

Jeff Stahler’s Moderately Confused for the 16th is the old joke told about accountants and lawyers when they encounter mathematics, recast to star the future disgraced former president. The way we normally define ‘two’ and ‘plus’ and ‘two’ and ‘equals’ and ‘four’ there’s not room for quibbling about their relationship. Not without just lying, anyway. Thus this satisfies the rules of joke formation.

Olivia Jaimes’s Nancy for the 16th is, I think, the point that Jaimes’s Nancy has appeared in my essays more than Guy Gilchrist’s ever did. Well, different artists have different interests. This one depicts Nancy getting the motivation she needed to excel in arithmetic. I’m not convinced of the pedagogical soundness of the Nancy comic strip. But it’s not as though people won’t practice things for rewards.

Jerry van Amerongen’s Ballard Street for the 17th is somehow a blend of the Moderately Confused and Nancy strips from the day before. All right, then. It’s nice when people share their enthusiasms.

John McPherson’s Close to Home for the 17th is the Roman Numerals joke for the week. Enjoy.

Terri Liebenson’s Pajama Diaries for the 18th is the Venn Diagram joke for the week. Enjoy.

I try to put all my Reading the Comics posts at this link, based on the ‘Comic Strips’ tag. Essays that mention Bewley are at this link. The essays which discuss Moderately Confused should be gathered at this link. The increasing number of essays mentioning Nancy are at this link. The Ballard Street strips discussed should be at this link; it turns out to be a new tag. Huh. Any Close To Home strips reviewed here should be at this link; it, too, is a new tag. And more Pajama Diaries comments should be at this link. Thanks for reading.