Applying the Fundamentals

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


It's always the same old story, a case of x or y... And I'm shocked -- SHOCKED! -- to find math in this comic!

Numerical Turn of Phrase

I enjoy numbers, and I enjoy reading even though I don't always enjoy reading about numbers because it can get very tedious. Nevertheless, occasionally someone puts chocolate in my peanut butter (or gets peanut butter on my chocolate), and you get something like this:

"Samia of Fife was five feet tall, exactly, and all sixty inches of her were in a state of quivering exasperation. She weighed one and a half pounds per inch and, at the moment, each of her ninety pounds represented sixteen ounces of solid anger."

I just enjoyed that line and thought it a great way to open a chapter and introduce a character. And two things occurred to me only as I type it: even though it's science fiction, the measurements are not in metric, and the weight of 90 pounds is given without any consideration for actual gravity of the planet. What would the Galactic Empire think?

Unfortunately, I was left scratching my head by a phrase used two pages later:

"... made her an object of mild derision to people who were accustomed to thinking of the aristocratic Ladies of Sark as devoted entirely to the glitter of polite society and, eventually, acting as incubators for at least, but no more than, two future Squires of Sark."

Now, since "at least" means no less than, what this sentence is saying is that ever "Lady" is expected to have no less than nor no more than two children. In other words, two children. Now, I'd want to call this guy some kind of hack, but since it was Isaac Asimov, most would likely disagree with me.

So, okay, so maybe "hack" is too strong, but it was still a weird way to say "two and only two", or simply "exactly two".

Four-Color Theorem

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


According to the Four-Color Theorem, four crayons should be enough to color in any turkey.

This year, I'm thanking for places like Raising Our Kids for having pictures of turkeys to color in because I didn't have the time nor patience to make my own. For that matter, I didn't have the patience to color in a turkey that had 2 or 3 times the number of sections. (And let's not even get into the grayscale pixelation issues!)

Happy Thanksgiving!

New Additions

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


The last of the original sketches from the year before I started the comic. It was on the back of an index card and slightly faded, so it didn't scan too well, but you get the idea.

It's About Time

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


B.C. or not B.C, that is the question ...

You know why there is no metric time? Because they tried it and everyone thought it was stupid.
A cm is not the same as an inch, a meter is not a yard, a liter is not a quart, so "BCE" should not be the same as "B.C."

If they need a new calendar with a different start date, might I suggest "After Ford"?

Try, Try Again

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


Yes, it should be "Seven of Thirteen", but any geek would rather have "Seven of Nine".

Banach-Tarski Comics

In the comments on reddit about this Luke Surl comic involving Banach-Tarski, there was the following list of Banach-Tarski-inspired comics:


http://mrburkemath.blogspot.com/2009/10/humpty-dumpty.html

http://brownsharpie.courtneygibbons.org/?p=82

http://spikedmath.com/234.html

http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2339.html

I was happy to be included. 8-)

On the Run

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


They should catch it. It's a relatively slow bus.

Frigg's Day

Friday is "Frigg's Day" name for Frigg, the Norse Goddess of Foreknowledge.

This explains why when I walked into a classroom today which had gone bezerk and hollered, "What's friggin' goin' on?", I already knew the answer even before I asked.

Mouse Troubles

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


The farmer's wife and his grandfather clock -- oh, the murinity!

Minus X? Why?

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


I hope branching out into a new quadrant doesn't reflect poorly on the comic.

This bonus comic brought to you courtesy of "Supplyman" and "SpikedMath".
Yes, my own stuff is coming...

Transcendental Addition

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


Some numbers transcend ordinary mathematics the way a good pie transcends ordinary desserts.

Oddly enough, it isn't known whether the sum of pi and e is transcendental.

Evenly enough, this comic was suggested from a comment made on a recent Spiked Math comic.

Daylight Savings

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(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


And the funny thing isn't that I get to go back to "EST", but that everyone I know uses the abbreviation "EST" all year long even when "EDT" would be correct (for those in the Eastern Time Zone).

Spiked Math / Geeky Comic Shout-out

Mike at Spiked Math has shout-outs to (x, why?) and other geeky webcomics in this comic of his own.

More Fractals

Too good not to repost:


see more So Much Pun