Randall Monroe (of xkcd fame) has taken on Verizon:
(via failblog)
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March 18th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Read the date on the check
March 19th, 2009 at 1:40 am
Yeah, but it’s still great
Of course, the failblog people got it horribly wrong when they claimed that the exponential was e^2pi. And if you haven’t listened to it, but feel like bashing your head against the wall in amazement/horror of the stupidity, I do recommend heading to the “has taken on Verizon” link above and listen to the support call this is referencing.
March 19th, 2009 at 2:05 am
I don’t think I have it in me to sit through the entire audio. I’ve already ripped off tufts of hair and knocked my head through a few brick walls.
March 19th, 2009 at 3:21 am
2.002
March 19th, 2009 at 3:23 am
Oops
0.002
Guess I can’t work at Verizon (or can I?)
March 19th, 2009 at 4:50 am
So what’s the significance of the date?
March 19th, 2009 at 5:24 am
That Munroe’s self-congratulatory, lazy humor-of-recognition link first did the rounds over two years ago.
March 19th, 2009 at 5:49 am
Yep, it is .002 ; though I too thought it might be exp(2pi)
March 19th, 2009 at 6:41 am
What is the actual exponent?
March 19th, 2009 at 6:55 am
Bah, a math/science/engineering undergrad could solve that, or anyone else as long as they’ve had through differential equations, or otherwise learned Euler’s theorem.
For the uninitiated, e^(i*pi) = -1, and the summation 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + …. = 1, so they cancel out. So the check is for $0.002, or 2/10 of a cent. The reason is explained in the link, and it’s quite hilarious, if you find the abject ignorance of your fellow humans funny.
March 19th, 2009 at 7:31 am
Yes, because the internet is indeed a race!
March 19th, 2009 at 7:56 am
To be a bit pedantic, shouldn’t the second line have the amount in words? Probably something like: ee to the eye pie plus the sum over all negative integers k, of two to the power k plus two thousandths?
March 19th, 2009 at 10:43 am
It’s usually in words to stop someone from sticking an extra digit in the “$[]” field, but is not required. I suppose if the Verizon employee were very sneaky, they could mess with the formula for fun and profit.
March 19th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Sorry, Julianne. I didn’t meen to imply the internet is a race. I’m sure you have better things to be doing than propagating memes, and funny is funny, even two years later.
It’s just Randall Monroe and his xkcd comic is not funny. Obviously that’s a matter of taste and, judging by the doors and office walls around my department, I’m in a minority among physicists. But his brand of humour is such lazy, joke-less humour of recognition that I can’t help but think his popularity is due to narcissism among young scientists, especially grad students. How else do we explain the popularity of jokes that are really nothing more than “Python the programming language exists” or “Math exists”. These are classic “2% jokes”, which are designed to make people think that most people will miss so that they can feel superior, but which are actually not so hard to get. It’s fine to throw a few of these into a 22 minute episode of the Simpson’s or 30 Rock, but to base an entire grad school culture on them is narcissism — either that or we’re all just incredibly easy lays, comedically.
And I see xkcd so much now, and especially on an outreach site like this, that I think this goes beyond a harmless waste of time, which is why I spoke up in that sarcastic way. My point is, xkcd actually does our community’s reputation harm in the outside world. As if we weren’t written off as aspie shut-ins enough already.
March 19th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Yech Mike, chip on your shoulder much? Xkcd–probably spend 3 minutes a week looking at them, sometimes I laugh, sometimes not(I know absolutely nothing about programming or higher math so I’m content with a lot of it sailing right over my head). Anyway, Most humor these days isn’t based on jokes.
March 19th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Speaking as someone who is not a physicist, a mathematician or a programmer, I adore xkcd. It’s nerd humour. What’s wrong with that?
March 19th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
I actually didn’t find the picture funny. Pretentious, yes, but not funny. What are we supposed to think – “uh oh, those idiots don’t know that exp(i*pi)=-1″? Newsflash – there are a ton of people who don’t know that, including (IMHO) every single billionaire on the Forbes list.
The blog about Verizon Math was much more enlightening and explained the frustration very well.
March 19th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
No, what’s funny is that those idiots don’t know the difference between 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents. The exponentials and infinite sums simply rub in the fact that those mouth-breathers essentially don’t know the difference between a dollar and a penny.
And for the record, xkcd is, on the whole, funny. Anyone who thinks otherwise shall be sentenced to watching Larry the Cable Guy on an infinite loop. If you don’t like xkcd, then you’d probably like that anyway.
March 19th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
I dunno Mike. Those stick figures manage to have an awful lot of sex…
March 20th, 2009 at 1:04 am
[...] Shared a link on Google Reader. Hopefully there are some underemployed postdocs working the call center… [...]
March 20th, 2009 at 1:36 am
Look, this is plain funny… I had to bite my lip to keep from spewing coffee on my screen in horror. I enjoyed it much pedantic or no pedantic its funny.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:00 am
Haha, don’t get me started on his twee, crypto-sexist attitude to women!
March 20th, 2009 at 10:18 am
The youtube of the .002 dollar to cent phone conversation is highly recommended for entertainement value:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCJ3Oz5JVKs
March 20th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
[...] Hopefully there are some underemployed postdocs working the call center… [...]
March 20th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Mike, to be perfectly honest, you’re coming off as a pretentious snob. How does that help with improving the image of physicists?
March 20th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Reminds me of a guy in the UK a few years ago who had his car number plate made up of Egyptian heiroglyphics, a sequence of fishes and eagles and suchlike, which for quite a while completely flummoxed speed cameras and for that any matter traffic cops on his tail. As he pointed out, he couldn’t be held responsible if the police were heiroglyphic illiterates.
After consulting many learned barristers and legal codes, a flustered Transport Ministry conceded that there was no law against it, although this loophole was later closed.
March 20th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
I don’t see anyone printing out my “pretentious” comment and posting it on their office door, so I don’t think it makes any difference to the image of physicists.
March 20th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
The lesson learned here (should you choose to learn it) is when a Verizon rep tells you the charge per Kb is 0.002 cents; DON’T BELIEVE THEM!!
March 21st, 2009 at 2:32 am
Maybe the IMF needs to write out a cheque for exactly e^(PI . SQRT(163)) to get the world’s economies back on their feet.
Actually, that’s always puzzled me – If every country goes to the IMF for a handout, where do *they* get the money? The aliens on Alpha Centauri?!
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:13 am
I agree with Mike 100%.
Exhibit A: http://xkcd.com/26/
Now, I can’t see why anyone would find this funny in any way other than “I know what a Fourier transform is”.
Exhibit B: http://xkcd.com/208/ Now I don’t know what regular expressions are, but I think I `get’ the comic—it’s just not very funny. I think, if anyone finds it funny, a large proportion of the humour would be “hahaha I know what that technical term means”.
There are some examples of good ones such as http://xkcd.com/507/ , in which there is a joke other than knowing the scientific method, I guess. But I think in general xkcd depends far too heavily on recognition of jargon. And my opinion is that this is lazy and “cliquey”.
Dinosaur comics (http://www.qwantz.com/), on the other hand is funny and clever, “geeky” if you like, in a way involving appreciation of subtle concepts, not of technical terms and in-jokes.
March 23rd, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Actually, regarding ‘Exhibit A’, it seems to me that taking the quantum Fourier transform of Schroedinger’s cat would in fact save it. Maybe he gave the right medicine to the wrong cat …
Frankly I love xkcd, and while I can see that the humour is somewhat niche, it seems absurd to blame it for damaging the image of physics.
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Hey Mike –
I think xkcd is pretty funny. It’s flawed, sure, but I’m not aware of lots of physics comics that outdo it (I’d say Dinosaur Comics is about equally funny, just in a very different way). Really, I think physics comic humor is pretty much in its infancy and could be developed greatly if there were to develop a critical mass of physics cartoonists competing and playing off each other. (The key to this happening, of course, is to first get a heck of a lot more people seriously interested in physics than currently are!) But hey, you think you can do better? Link to your work, and I will read with pleasure! Or perhaps there are already loads of great physics comics that I am just unaware of. Again, I’d be happy to be educated.
J
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I feel that xkcd and Dinosaur Comics are so different in their scope, subject matter, and style of humor that they can hardly be compared.
April 4th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Ya, XKCD really isn’t funny at all. I agree with Mike and Sam — it’s popularity is because it makes people in science programs feel like they’re in a special exclusive club, and not because it’s funny or intelligent. It’s dumb. I think the check is funny though, only because I wish I had done something like that…
April 9th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I only vaguely remember what a fourier transform is, but I still found #26 funny. It’s not pretentious it’s absurdist. It’s not a math joke at all really. It’s a comment on how unfunny garfield is.
Liz is the vet from garfield.
It is ok not to like absurdism, but you don’t get to dictate to the rest of us what is funny or not.
June 29th, 2009 at 9:31 am
I thought I’d get edumacated smarter reading these comments. That idea went horribly, horribly wrong. Must. Rest. Now.