The Absolute Value Of Humor

The eternal struggle of mathematicians and physicists! On the left, we have the exact analytical solution - clean, elegant, and bringing pure joy. On the right... the horrifying approximation that haunts our nightmares when we're told "just use numerical methods." Nothing strikes terror into a theorist's heart quite like abandoning beautiful equations for crude estimations. The face on the right is literally how your soul feels after spending 8 hours coding a simulation that gives you "close enough" results!

What calculus students see: A terrifying wall of formulas that induces panic attacks. What math professors see: "Just the basics" to memorize before the real fun begins. This "cheat sheet" is basically the mathematical equivalent of saying "here's everything you need to know about swimming" right before throwing you into the Mariana Trench. And that quote from Ma Yilong? Pure solidarity with every student who's ever stared at a derivative and questioned their life choices.

The eternal mathematical torture! Finding the smallest number in (0,1) is like trying to find the bottom step on an infinite staircase. You think 0.0001 is small? Nope, 0.00001 is smaller! How about 0.000000001? Still not the smallest! There's always a smaller positive number—just divide by 10 again! Poor Sisyphus got upgraded from pushing a boulder uphill to searching for the smallest positive real number. At least the boulder had an endpoint!

When mathematicians design sexuality tests, they cut straight to the logical core! This flowchart brilliantly reduces sexual orientation to a simple equality comparison: if x (your gender) equals y (gender you're attracted to), then congratulations—you've mathematically proven yourself gay! The elegance of this algorithm would make computer scientists weep with joy. It's Boolean logic meets human sexuality in the most gloriously reductive way possible. Who needs complex psychological assessments when you can solve for gay with a single conditional statement?

The eternal battle between students and calculus professors captured in four panels of pure mathematical trauma. The integral of zero with respect to x is indeed zero... technically . But that professor is having none of it without the arbitrary constant of integration (+C). That angry NPC face is every math professor who's died a little inside each time a student forgets the +C. Twenty years teaching calculus and they're still getting eye twitches when someone integrates without adding that constant. The constant that has ruined more perfect test scores than showing up late to the exam.

The scientific hierarchy complex in one perfect comic! Mathematicians casually existing in their abstract realm while everyone else squabbles about which discipline is more "pure." Physics majors thinking they're the pinnacle of applied science, chemists feeling superior to biologists, and poor sociologists at the far end getting roasted as "applied psychology." The academic superiority complex is strong with this one! Meanwhile, mathematicians are off in their own universe of pure abstraction, blissfully unaware that the rest of science even exists. As someone who survived undergrad physics, I can confirm this hierarchy is discussed with deadly seriousness in department lounges everywhere.