I don’t presume to guess why. But Comic Strip Master Command sent out orders one lead-time ago to have everybody do jokes that relate to gambling. We see the consequences here.
John Rose’s Barney Google and Snuffy Smith for the 2nd of November builds its joke on the idea that the mathematics of gambling is all anyone really needs. It’s a better-than-average crack about the usefulness of mathematics. It’s also truer than average. Much of how we make decisions is built on the expectation value, a core concept of probability. If we do this, what can we expect to gain or lose? If we do that instead, what would we expect? If we can place a value — even a loose, approximate value — on our time, our money, our experiences, we gain a new tool for making decisions.
John Rose’s Barney Google and Snuffy Smith for the 2nd of November, 2015. I am actually more comfortable with Snuffy’s sentiments than you might think. However, I think he might want Jughaid to also get comfortable with card-counting techniques, and the conditional probabilities that they imply. (Given that a 10, an 8, and a 9 are already showing, what is the probability that the dealer will go over?)
Unanswered question: where did Snuffy Smith get a twenty-dollar bill from?
Probability runs through the history of mathematics. That’s euphemistic. Gambling runs through the history of mathematics. Quite a bit of what we call probability derives from people who wanted to better understand games of chance, and to get an edge in the bets they might place. A question like “how many ways can three dice come up?” is a good homework problem today. It was once a subject of serious study and argument. We realize it’s still a good question when we wonder if the first die coming up 6, the second 3, and and third 1 is a different outcome from the first die coming up 3, the second 1, and the third 6.
Fully understanding the mathematics of gambling requires not just counting and not just fractions. It will bring us to algebra, to calculus, and to all the tools that let us understand thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. If that isn’t everything, that is a good rough approximation.
Scott Adams’s Dilbert Classic for the 2nd of November originally ran the 8th of September, 1992. It’s about a sadly common kind of nerd behavior, the desire to one-up one’s stories of programming hardship. In this one the generic guy — a different figure from Adams’s current model of generic guy — asserts he goes back to before binary numbers, even. I admit skepticism. Certainly you could list different numbers by making the same symbol often enough. We do that when we resort to tally marks. But we need some second symbol to note the end of a number. With tally marks we can do that with physical space. A computer’s memory, though? That needs something else.
Kevin Fagan’s Drabble began a story about the logic of buying a lottery ticket this week. (The story goes on several days past this.) This is another probability, that is gambling, problem. Large jackpots present a pretty good philosophical challenge. It’s possible the jackpot will be so large that the expected value of buying a ticket is positive. This would seem to imply you should buy a ticket. But your chance of winning will be, as ever, vanishingly small. One chance in 200 million or more. You will not win. This would seem to imply you should not buy a ticket. Both are hard arguments to refute. I admit that when the jackpot gets sufficiently large, I’ll buy one or two tickets. I don’t expect to win the $200 million jackpot or anything like that, though. I’ll be content if I can secure a cozy little $25,000 minor prize. But I might just get a long john doughnut instead.
Larry Wright’s Motley for the 2nd of November originally ran that day in 1987. It name-drops E = mc2 as shorthand for genius, the equation’s general role.
Doug Bratton’s Pop Culture Shock Therapy for the 3rd of November doesn’t mention E = mc2, but it is an Albert Einstein joke. It doesn’t build on the comforting but dubious legend of Einstein being a poor student. That’s an unusual direction.
Eric the Circle for the 3rd of November is by “Shane”. It’s a cute joke: if Eric were in a horserace, how would his lead be measured? Obviously, by comparison to his diameter. I doubt the race caller would need so many digits past the decimal, though. If cartoons and old-time radio sitcoms about horseracing haven’t led me wrong, distances are measured in a couple common fractions of a horse length — a half, a quarter, three-quarters and so on. So surely Eric would be called “about seven radii” or “three and a half diameters” ahead. It would make sense if his lead were measured by circumferences, if he’s rolling along. But it can be surprisingly hard to estimate by eye what the circumference of a circle is. Diameters are easier.
Jonathan Lemon’s Rabbits Against Magic for the 4th of November has a M&oum;bius strip joke. Obviously, though, what’s taking so long is that Eightball’s spare tire isn’t even on the rim. This is bad.
John Zakour and Scott Roberts’s Working Daze for the 4th of November is a variation on the joke about mathematicians being lousy at arithmetic. Here it’s an accountant who’s bad. I am reminded of the science fiction great Arthur C Clarke mentioning his time as an accounts auditor. He supposed that as long as figures added up approximately, to something like one percent, then there probably wasn’t anything requiring further scrutiny going on. He was able to finish his day’s work quickly, and went on to other jobs in time. Bob Newhart also claimed to not demand too much precision in the accounts he was overseeing. He then went on to sell comedy records to radio stations for a fair bit less than they cost to produce, so perhaps he was better off not working on the money side of things.
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