Reading the Comics, January 1, 2019: New Year’s Day Edition

It’s a new year. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to keep up some of my old habits. One of them is reading the comics for the mathematics bits. For example …

Johnny Hart’s Back To BC for the 30th presents some curious use of mathematics. At least the grammar of mathematics. It’s a bunch of statements that are supposed to, taken together, overload … I’m going to say BC’s … brain. (I’m shaky on which of the characters is Peter and which is BC. Their difference in hair isn’t much of a visual hook.) Certainly mathematics inspires that feeling that one’s overloaded one’s brain. The long strings of reasoning and (ideally) precise definitions are hard to consider. And the proofs mathematicians find the most fun are, often, built cleverly. That is, going about their business demonstrating things that don’t seem relevant, and at the end tying them together. It’s hard to think.

Johnny Hart’s Back To BC for the 30th of December, 2018. The strip says it’s from the 18th of February, 1962. Essays inspired by B.C., both 1962 vintage and 2019 current, should be at this link.

But then … Peter … isn’t giving a real mathematical argument. He’s giving nonsense. And obvious nonsense, rather than nonsense because the writer wanted something that sounded complicated without caring what was said. Talking about a “four-sided triangle” or a “rectangular circle” has to be Peter trying to mess with BC’s head. Confidently-spoken nonsense can sound as if it’s deeper wisdom than the listener has. Which, fair enough: how can you tell whether an argument is nonsense or just cleverer than you are? Consider the kind of mathematics proof I mentioned above, where the structure might almost be a shaggy dog joke. If you can’t follow the logic, is it because the argument is wrong or because you haven’t worked out why it is right?

I believe that … Peter … is just giving nonsense and trusting that … BC … won’t know the difference, but will wear himself out trying to understand. Pranks.

Tim Lachowski’s Get A Life for the 31st of December, 2018. Essays discussing things raised by Get A Life should be at this link.

Tim Lachowski’s Get A Life for the 31st just has some talk about percentages and depreciation and such. It’s meant to be funny that we might think of a brain depreciating, as if anatomy could use the same language as finance. Still, one of the virtues of statistics is the ability to understand a complicated reality with some manageable set of numbers. If we accept the convention that some number can represent the value of a business, why not the convention that some number could represent the health of a brain? So, it’s silly, but I can imagine a non-silly framing for it.

Tony Cochran’s Agnes for the 1st of January, 2019. This and other essays discussing Agnes should be at this link.

Tony Cochran’s Agnes for the 1st is about calendars. The history of calendars is tied up with mathematics in deep and sometimes peculiar ways. One might imagine that a simple ever-increasing index from some convenient reference starting time would do. And somehow that doesn’t. Also, the deeper you go into calendars the more you wonder if anyone involved in the project knew how to count. If you ever need to feel your head snapping, try following closely just how the ancient Roman calendar worked. Especially from the era when they would occasionally just drop an extra month in to the late-middle of February.

The Julian and Gregorian calendars have a year number that got assigned proleptically, that is, with the year 1 given to a set of dates that nobody present at the time called the year 1. Which seems fair enough; not many people in the year 1 had any idea that something noteworthy was under way. Calendar epochs dated to more clear events, like the reign of a new emperor or the revolution that took care of that whole emperor problem, will more reliably start with people aware of the new numbers. Proleptic dating has some neat side effects, though. If you ever need to not impress someone, you can point out that the dates from the 1st of March, 200 to the 28th of February, 300 both the Julian and the Gregorian calendar dates exactly matched.

Niklas Eriksson’s Carpe Diem for the 2nd of January, 2019. And appearances by Carpe Diem in my essays should be at this link.

Niklas Eriksson’s Carpe Diem for the 2nd is a dad joke about mathematics. And uses fractions as emblematic of mathematics, fairly enough. Introducing them and working with them are the sorts of thing that frustrate and confuse. I notice also the appearance of “37” here. Christopher Miller’s fascinating American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny identifies 37 as the current “funniest number”, displacing the early 20th century’s preferred 23 (as in skidoo). Among other things, odd numbers have a connotation of seeming more random than even numbers; ask someone to pick a whole number from 1 to 50 and you’ll see 37’s and 33’s more than you’ll see, oh, 48’s. Why? Good question. It’s among the mysteries of psychology. There’s likely no really deep reason. Maybe a sense that odd numbers are, well, odd as in peculiar, and that a bunch of peculiarities will be funny. Now let’s watch the next decade make a food of me and decide the funniest number is 64.

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I’m glad to be back on schedule publishing Reading the Comics posts. I should have another one this week. It’ll be at this link when it’s ready. Thanks for reading.

Reading the Comics, October 2, 2018: Frazz Loves Mathematics Edition

Jef Mallet’s Frazz did its best to take over my entire Reading-the-Comics bit this week. I won’t disrespect his efforts, especially as I take the viewpoint of the strip to be that arithmetic is a good thing to learn. Meanwhile let me offer another mention of Playful Mathematics Education Blog Carnival #121, hosted here last week. And to point out the Fall 2018 Mathematics A To Z continues this week with the letters ‘E’ and ‘F’. And I’m still looking for topics to discuss for select letters between H and M yet.

Sandra Bell-Lundy’s Between Friends for the 1st is a Venn Diagram joke to start off the week. The form looks wrong, though. This can fool the reader into thinking the cartoonist messed up the illustration. Here’s why. The point of a Venn Diagram is to show the two or more groups of things and identify what they have in common. It is true that any life will have regrets about things done. And regrets about things not done. But what are the things that one both ‘did do’ and ‘didn’t do’? Unless you accept the weasel-wording of “did halfheartedly”, there is nothing that one both did and did not.

Sandra Bell-Lundy’s Between Friends for the 1st of October, 2018. Regardless of the internal logic of the joke, I like the art touch of the protagonist leaning against one of the bubbles. It makes the joke more interesting than simply being a pair of bubbles would be.

And here is where I will argue Bell-Lundy did this right. The overlap of things one ‘did do’ and ‘didn’t do’ must be empty. Do not be fooled by there being area in common in the overlap. One thing Venn Diagrams help us establish are the different kinds of things we are studying, and to work out whether that kind of thing can have any examples. And if the set of things in your life that you regret is empty — well! Is it not “living your best life”, as the caption advances, to have nothing one regrets doing, and nothing one regrets not doing? Thus I say to you the jury of readers, Sandra Bell-Lundy has correctly used the Venn Diagram form to make a “No Regrets” art.

That said, I can’t explain why the protagonist on the left is slumping and looking depressed. I suppose we have to take that she hasn’t lived her best life, but does have information about what might have been.

Jeff Mallet’s Frazz for the 1st starts a string of mathematics class jokes. Here is one about story problems, particularly ones about pricing apples and groups of apples. I don’t know whether apples are used as story problem examples. They seem like good example objects. They’re reasonably familiar. A person can have up to several dozen of them without it being ridiculously many. (Count a half-bushel of apples sometime.) You can imagine dividing them among people or tasks. You can even imagine halving and quartering them without getting ridiculous. Great set of traits. But the kid has overlooked that if Mrs Olsen wanted the price of an apple she would just look at the price sign.

Jeff Mallet’s Frazz for the 1st of October, 2018. I’m sorry, I don’t know the child’s name here.

(Every time I’m at the market I mean to check the apple prices, and I do, and I forget the total on the way out. I mention because I live in the same area as Jef Mallet. So there is a small but not-ridiculous chance he and I have bought apples from the same place. If he has a strip mentioning the place with the free coffee, popcorn, and gelato samples I’ll know to my satisfaction.)

Jeff Mallet’s Frazz for the 2nd has a complaint about having to show one’s work. But as with apple prices, we don’t really care whether someone has the right answer. We care whether they have the right method for finding an answer. Or, better, whether they have a method that could plausibly find the right answer, and an idea of how to check whether they did get it. This is why it’s worth, for example, working out a rough expected answer before doing a final calculation.

Jeff Mallet’s Frazz for the 2nd of October, 2018. Seriously, why doesn’t every comic have an up-to-date cast roster with pictures? It would make everybody’s life so much easier.

The talk about flight paths reminds me of a story passed around sci.space.history back in the day. The story is about development of the automatic landing computers used for the Apollo Missions. The guidance computers were programmed to get the lunar module from this starting point to a final point on the lunar surface. This turns into a question of polynomial interpolation. That’s coming up with a curve that fits some data points, particularly, the positions and velocities the last couple times those were known plus the intended landing position. You can always find a polynomial that passes smoothly through a finite bunch of data points. That’s not hard. But, allegedly, the guidance computer would project paths where the height above the lunar surface was negative for a while. Numerically, there’s nothing wrong with a negative number. It’s just got some practical problems, as the earliest Apollo missions were before any subway tunnels could be built.

Jeff Mallet’s Frazz for the 3rd of October, 2018. Also while writing does show off your work, it doesn’t show all your work, not if you’re writing anything that isn’t really basic. There’s research, there’s thinking, and there’s (often) outlines and drafts and revisions and editing. And, come to think of my own school experience, I didn’t like showing my outlines or drafts either. (In my defense, I am one of those people with a gift for academic narrative, so I can do an essay of up to two thousand words with little to no outline. And while I do better on my second draft, I don’t do enormously better most of the time.)

Jeff Mallet’s Frazz for the 3rd continues the protest against showing one’s work. I do like the analogy of arithmetic skills for mathematics being like spelling skills for writing. You can carry on without these skills, for either mathematics or writing. But knowing them makes your life easier. And enjoying these building-block units foreshadows enjoying the whole. But yeah, addition and multiplication tables can look like tedium if you don’t find something at least a little thrilling in how, say, 9 times 7 is 63.

Tim Lachowski’s Get a Life for the 2nd of October, 2018. You know, that guy has an enormous desk. Maybe he’s at a conference table.

Tim Lachowski’s Get a Life for the 2nd is a bit of mathematics wordplay. So that closes the essay out well.

Thanks for reading Reading the Comics. Other comic strip review essays are at this link. More essays with Between Friends should be at this link. Other essays with Frazz in them are at this link. And appearances by Get A Life should be at this link.

Reading the Comics, January 9, 2018: Be Squared Edition

It wasn’t just another busy week from Comic Strip Master Command. And a week busy enough for me to split the mathematics comics into two essays. It was one where I recognized one of the panels as one I’d featured before. Multiple times. Some of the comics I feature are in perpetual reruns and don’t have your classic, deep, Peanuts-style decades of archives to draw from. I don’t usually go checking my archives to see if I’ve mentioned a comic before, not unless something about it stands out. So for me to notice I’ve seen this strip repeatedly can mean only one thing: there was something a little bit annoying about it. Recognize it yet? You will.

Hy Eisman’s Popeye for the 7th of January, 2018 is an odd place for mathematics to come in. J Wellington Wimpy regales Popeye with all the intellectual topics he tried to impress his first love with, and “Euclidean postulates in the original Greek” made the cut. And, fair enough. Euclid’s books are that rare thing that’s of important mathematics (or scientific) merit and that a lay person can just pick up and read, even for pleasure. These days we’re more likely to see a division between mathematics writing that’s accessible but unimportant (you know, like, me) or that’s important but takes years of training to understand. Doing it in the original Greek is some arrogant showing-off, though. Can’t blame Carolyn for bailing on someone pulling that stunt.

Hy Eisman’s Popeye for the 7th of January, 2018. Why does Wimpy’s shirt have a belly button?

Mark O’Hare’s Citizen Dog rerun for the 7th continues last essay’s storyline about Fergus taking Maggie’s place at school. He’s having trouble understanding the story within a story problem. I sympathize.

John Hambrock’s The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee for the 8th is set in mathematics class. And Edison tries to use a pile of mathematically-tinged words to explain why it’s okay to read a Star Wars book instead of paying attention. Or at least to provide a response the teacher won’t answer. Maybe we can make something out of this by allowing the monetary value of something to be related to its relevance. But if we allow that then Edison’s messed up. I don’t know what quantity is measured by multiplying “every Star Wars book ever written” by “all the movies and merchandise”. But dividing that by the value of the franchise gets … some modest number in peculiar units divided by a large number of dollars. The number value is going to be small. And the dimensions are obviously crazy. Edison needs to pay better attention to the mathematics.

John Hambrock’s The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee for the 8th of January, 2018. No, I haven’t got any idea how the third panel leads to the fourth. I mean, I know what should lead from there to there — a moment of Edison realizing he’s said something so impolitic he can’t carry on — but that moment isn’t there. The teacher seems to just shrug the whole nonsense off. Something went wrong in the composing of the joke.

Johnny Hart’s B.C. for the 14th of July, 1960 shows off the famous equation of the 20th century. All part of the comic’s anachronism-comedy chic. The strip reran the 9th of January. “E = mc²” is, correctly, associated with Albert Einstein and some of his important publications of 1905. But the expression does have some curious precursors, people who had worked out the relationship (or something close to it) before Einstein and who didn’t quite know what they had. A short piece from Scientific American a couple years back describes pre-Einstein expressions of the equation from Oliver Heaviside, Henri Poincaré, and Fritz Hasenöhrl. I’m not surprised Poincaré had something close to this; it seems like he spent twenty years almost discovering Relativity. That’s all right; he did enough in dynamical systems that mathematicians aren’t going to forget him.

Tim Lachowski’s Get A Life for the 9th is at least the fourth time I’ve seen this panel since I started doing Reading the Comics posts regularly. (Previous times: the 5th of November, 2012 and the 10th of March, 2015 and the 14th of July, 2016.) I’m like this close to concluding the strip’s in perpetual rerun and I can drop it from my daily reading.

Jason Chatfield’s Ginger Meggs for the 9th draws my eye just because the blackboard lists “Prime Numbers”. Fair enough place setting, although what’s listed are 1, 3, 5, and 7. These days mathematicians don’t tend to list 1 as a prime number; it’s inconvenient. (A lot of proofs depend on their being exactly one way to factorize a number. But you can always multiply a number by ‘1’ a couple more times without changing its value. So ‘6’ is 3 times 2, but it’s also 3 times 2 times 1, or 3 times 2 times 1 times 1, or 3 times 2 times 1^{145,388,434,247}. You can write around that, but it’s easier to define ‘1’ as not a prime.) But it could be defended. I can’t think any reason to leave ‘2’ off a list of prime numbers, though. I think Chatfield conflated odd and prime numbers. If he’d had a bit more blackboard space we could’ve seen whether the next item was 9 or 11 and that would prove the matter.

Paul Trap’s Thatababy for the 9th uses arithmetic — square roots — as the kind of thing to test whether a computer’s working. Everyone has their little tests like this. My love’s father likes to test whether the computer knows of the band Walk The Moon or of Christine Korsgaard (a prominent philosopher in my love’s specialty). I’ve got a couple words I like to check dictionaries for. Of course the test is only any good if you know what the answer should be, and what’s the actual square root of 3,278? Goodness knows. It’s got to be between 50 (50 squared is 25 hundred) and 60 (60 squared is 36 hundred). Since 3,278 is so much closer 3,600 than 2,500 its square root should be closer to 60 than to 50. So 57-point-something is plausible. Unfortunately square roots don’t lend themselves to the same sorts of tricks from reading the last digit that cube roots do. And 3,278 isn’t a perfect square anyway. Alexa is right on this one. Also about the specific gravity of cobalt, at least if Wikipedia is right and not conspiring with the artificial intelligences on this one. Catch you in 2021.

Charles Schulz’s Peanuts for the 8th of October, 1953, is about practical uses of mathematics. It got rerun on the 9th of January.