Title image of the comic "The music of the Spheres" by Dr. Terence Tao and Zach Weinersmith.
First 2 panels of the comic "The music of the Spheres." A man is narrating the comic, he is the comic representation of the quoted author, Dr. Terence Tao. He says "When I tell people at parties that I'm a mathematician, there's often an awkward pause in the conversation, or the obligatory..." A tall character next to him chimes in "Oh, I was sooooo bad at Math in school!" In the second panel, the narrator continues "though occasionally, you run into a math and science enthusiast who wants to discuss a recent development they heard in the news..." The narrator looks deeply touched, as a young woman is talking to him, she is saying : "oh my gosh, my friends and I cannot stop talking about reconstructing cryptographic protocols from quantum principles and... Do you want to move this conversation to a whiteboard?"
Panels 3 to 6 of the comic "The music of the Spheres." The narrator is putting a reassuring hand on a sad man's shoulder. The narration reads "...or someone who actually had a good experience in their math classes and was somewhat wistful about not pursuing it." The saddened man says "I'll always think of Hadwiger's graph theory conjecture as... the one who got away." In the next panels, the narrator states "those are good moments. But, in general, the public have very little idea what mathematics is, and what mathematicians actually do. Popular culture gives us some caricature portrayals of mathematicians"
Panels 7 and 8 of the comic "The music of the Spheres." Both panels show a caricature of a mathematicians from pop culture. The first is a tortured genius, represented by a woman holding a piece of chalk saying "I cannot know love, but by god I *will* know if every polyomino with an area divisible by six can tile and hexagon!" The narration specifies that "torturedness rates among mathematicians are, in fact, average." The second example is the savant with strange mental powers, represented by a man surrounded by equations that obscure his vision. The narration specifies that "if you see equations floating before your eyes, please consult an ophthalmologist."
Does this change my imaginary Erdos number to a complex number?
Click the link to read the full comic on the site!
COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/sphere...
PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm...
STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com
