In Which I Feel A Little Picked On

This is not a proper Reading the Comics post, since there’s nothing mathematical about this. But it does reflect a project I’ve been letting linger for months and that I intend to finish before starting the abbreviated Mathematics A-to-Z for this year.

Jeff Stahler’s Moderately Confused for the 12th of June, 2021. Essays in which I discuss Moderately Confused, usually for its mathematical content, are at this link.

In the meanwhile. I have a person dear to me who’s learning college algebra. For no reason clear to me this put me in mind of last year’s essay about Extraneous Solutions. These are fun and infuriating friends. They’re created when you follow the rules about how you can rewrite a mathematical expression without changing its value. And yet sometimes you do these rewritings correctly and get a would-be solution that isn’t actually one. So I’d shared some thoughts about why they appear, and what tedious work keeps them from showing up.

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.

Anthony Blades’s Bewley rerun for the 16th of July, 2018. I don’t know, I’d check with someone who seemed more confident in their work.

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.

Jeff Stahler’s Moderately Confused for the 16th of July, 2018. Sorry to throw this at you without adequate warning. I got it that way myself.

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.

Olivia Jaimes’s Nancy for the 16th of July, 2018. If Nancy’s phrasing seems needlessly weird in the second and third panels (as it did to me) you might want to know that A Beautiful Genius was the name of a biography of the mathematician/economist John Nash. Yes, the Nash whose life inspired the movie A Beautiful Mind. So now it should seem a little less bizarre. Does it?

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.

Jerry van Amerongen’s Ballard Street for the 17th of July, 2018. I do like how eager Eric looks about sharing multiplication with people. I’ve never looked that cheery even while teaching stuff I loved.

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

John McPherson’s Close to Home for the 17th of July, 2018. You might think that’s a pretty shaky Colosseum in the background, but McPherson did have to communicate that this was happening in Ancient Rome faster than the reader could mistake the word balloon for a homonym of “ivy”. How would you do it?

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

Terri Liebenson’s Pajama Diaries for the 18th of July, 2018. … Yeah, I don’t have further commentary for this. Sorry.

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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.

Reading the Comics, December 11, 2017: Vamping For Andertoons Edition

So Mark Anderson’s Andertoons has been missing from the list of mathematically-themed the last couple weeks. Don’t think I haven’t been worried about that. But it’s finally given another on-topic-enough strip and I’m not going to include it here. I’ve had a terrible week and I’m going to use the comics we got in last week slowly.

Hector D Cantu and Carlos Castellanos’s Baldo for the 10th of December uses algebra as the type for homework you’d need help with. It reads plausibly enough to me, at least so far as I remember learning algebra.

Greg Evans’s Luann Againn for the 10th reprints the strip of the 10th of December, 1989. And as often happens, mathematics is put up as the stuff that’s too hard to really do. The expressions put up don’t quite parse; there’s nothing to solve. But that’s fair enough for a panicked brain. To not recognize what the problem even is makes it rather hard to solve.

Ruben Bolling’s Super-Fun-Pak Comix for the 10th is an installation of Quantum Mechanic, playing on the most fun example of non-commutative processes I know. That’s the uncertainty principle, which expresses itself as pairs of quantities that can’t be precisely measured simultaneously. There are less esoteric kinds of non-commutative processes. Like, rotating something 90 degrees along a horizontal and then along a vertical axis will turn stuff different from 90 degrees vertical and then horizontal. But that’s too easy to understand to capture the imagination, at least until you’re as smart as an adult and as thoughtful as a child.

Maria Scrivan’s Half Full for the 11th features Albert Einstein and one of the few equations that everybody knows. So that’s something.

Jeff Stahler’s Moderately Confused for the 11th features the classic blackboard full of equations, this time to explain why Christmas lights wouldn’t work. There is proper mathematics in lights not working. It’s that electrical-engineering work about the flow of electricity. The problem is, typically, a broken or loose bulb. Maybe a burnt-out fuse, although I have never fixed a Christmas lights problem by replacing the fuse. It’s just something to do so you can feel like you’ve taken action before screaming in rage and throwing the lights out onto the front porch. More interesting to me is the mathematics of strands getting tangled. The idea — a foldable thread, marked at regular intervals by points that can hook together — seems trivially simple. But it can give insight into how long molecules, particularly proteins, will fold together. It may help someone frustrated to ponder that their light strands are knotted for the same reasons life can exist. But I’m not sure it ever does.

Reading the Comics, April 29, 2017: The Other Half Of The Week Edition

I’d been splitting Reading the Comics posts between Sunday and Thursday to better space them out. But I’ve got something prepared that I want to post Thursday, so I’ll bump this up. Also I had it ready to go anyway so don’t gain anything putting it off another two days.

Bill Amend’s FoxTrot Classics for the 27th reruns the strip for the 4th of May, 2006. It’s another probability problem, in its way. Assume Jason is honest in reporting whether Paige has picked his number correctly. Assume that Jason picked a whole number. (This is, I think, the weakest assumption. I know Jason Fox’s type and he’s just the sort who’d pick an obscure transcendental number. They’re all obscure after π and e.) Assume that Jason is equally likely to pick any of the whole numbers from 1 to one billion. Then, knowing nothing about what numbers Jason is likely to pick, Paige would have one chance in a billion of picking his number too. Might as well call it certainty that she’ll pay a dollar to play the game. How much would she have to get, in case of getting the number right, to come out even or ahead? … And now we know why Paige is still getting help on probability problems in the 2017 strips.

Jeff Stahler’s Moderately Confused for the 27th gives me a bit of a break by just being a snarky word problem joke. The student doesn’t even have to resist it any.

Sandra Bell-Lundy’s Between Friends for the 29th of April, 2017. And while it’s not a Venn Diagram I’m not sure of a better way to visually represent that the cartoonist is going for. I suppose the intended meaning comes across cleanly enough and that’s the most important thing. It’s a strange state of affairs is all.

Sandra Bell-Lundy’s Between Friends for the 29th also gives me a bit of a break by just being a Venn Diagram-based joke. At least it’s using the shape of a Venn Diagram to deliver the joke. It’s not really got the right content.

Harley Schwadron’s 9 to 5 for the 29th is this week’s joke about arithmetic versus propaganda. It’s a joke we’re never really going to be without again.

Reading the Comics, March 25, 2017: Slow Week Edition

Slow week around here for mathematically-themed comic strips. These happen. I suspect Comic Strip Master Command is warning me to stop doing two-a-week essays on reacting to comic strips and get back to more original content. Message received. If I can get ahead of some projects Monday and Tuesday we’ll get more going.

Patrick Roberts’s Todd the Dinosaur for the 20th is a typical example of mathematics being something one gets in over one’s head about. Of course it’s fractions. Is there anything in elementary school that’s a clearer example of something with strange-looking rules and processes for some purpose students don’t even know what they are? In middle school and high school we get algebra. In high school there’s trigonometry. In high school and college there’s calculus. In grad school there’s grad school. There’s always something.

Patrick Roberts’s Todd the Dinosaur for the 20th of March, 2017. I’ll allow the kids-say-the-darndest-things setup for the strip. I’m stuck on wondering just how much good water wings that size could do. Yes, he’s limited by his anatomy but aren’t we all?

Jeff Stahler’s Moderately Confused for the 21st is the usual bad-mathematics-of-politicians joke. It may be a little more on point considering the Future Disgraced Former President it names, but the joke is surely as old as politicians and hits all politicians with the same flimsiness.

John Graziano’s Ripley’s Believe It Or Not for the 22nd names Greek mathematician Pythagoras. That’s close enough to on-point to include here, especially considering what a slow week it’s been. It may not be fair to call Pythagoras a mathematician. My understanding is we don’t know that actually did anything in mathematics, significant or otherwise. His cult attributed any of its individuals’ discoveries to him, and may have busied themselves finding other, unrelated work to credit to their founder. But there’s so much rumor and gossip about Pythagoras that it’s probably not fair to automatically dismiss any claim about him. The beans thing I don’t know about. I would be skeptical of anyone who said they were completely sure.

Vic Lee’s Pardon My Planet for the 23rd is the usual sort of not-understanding-mathematics joke. In this case it’s about percentages, which are good for baffling people who otherwise have a fair grasp on fractions. I wonder if people would be better at percentages if they learned to say “percent” as “out of a hundred” instead. I’m sure everyone who teaches percentages teaches that meaning, but that doesn’t mean the warning communicates.

Vic Lee’s Pardon My Planet for the 23rd of March, 2017. Don’t mind me, I’m busy trying to convince myself the back left leg of that park bench is hidden behind the guy’s leg and not missing altogether and it’s still pretty touch-and-go on that.

Stephan Pastis’s Pearls Before Swine for the 24th jams a bunch of angle puns into its six panels. I think it gets most of the basic set in there.

Samson’s Dark Side Of The Horse for the 25th mentions sudokus, and that’s enough for a slow week like this. I thought Horace was reaching for a calculator in the last panel myself, and was going to say that wouldn’t help any. But then I checked the numbers in the boxes and that made it all better.