A helicopter was flying around above Seattle when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft's electronic navigation and communications equipment.
Due to the clouds and haze, the pilot could not determine the helicopter's position and course to fly to the airport.
The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter's window. The pilot's sign said "WHERE AM I?" in large letters.
People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign and held it in a building window.
Their sign read: "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER."
The pilot smiled, waved, looked at her map, determined the course to steer to SEATAC airport, and landed safely.
After they were on the ground, one of the passengers asked the pilot how the "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER" sign helped determine their position.
The pilot responded "I knew that had to be the Microsoft building because, the response they gave me was technically correct, but completely useless."
....The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign, and held it in the helicopter's window. The pilot's sign said "WHERE AM I?" in large letters.
People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign and held it in a building window.
The Sign was a stylized picture of the helicopter they were in, with a BIG red arrow pointing towards the pilot's window where a small cartoon pilot held up a sign saying 'WHERE AM I" in a hand-rendered Helvetica font.
The pilot smiled...yadda yadda yadda..
After they were on the ground, one of the passengers asked...
The Pilot responded "Tableau Software"
Lost man in a balloon yells down at a man on the ground “Where am I?”
The man on the ground responds, “You’re in a balloon”
The man in the balloon says “You must be a mathematician”.
“Why?” asks the man on the ground.
“Because your answer is absolutely right and absolutely useless”
I say this as a pure engineer who has been a lead many times but never a PM.
"Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend. I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don't know where I am.
The man below produces a small object the shape of a teardrop colored a pleasing grayish blue that he proceeds to hold above his head in an inverted manner and then with a courtly, elegant bow indicates the ground the bottom of the teardrop is pointing at.
The man in the balloon flies off again, exclaiming under his breath "damn designers"
(Sorry if that was obvious and you meant something else.)
I know it soviet style:
A mathematician, a physicist and a biologist are flying in a air balloon and are lost.
They encounter a man walking below:
The biologist asks him: "do you know, where we are?"
"..." the man looks up and says nothing
The physicist ask him: "can you please tell us, where we are!"
"..." after a while the man says: "in a balloon".
The mathematician remarks, ah, he must be a philosopher. The others: "how do you know?"
"Well, for once he needed a lot of time to answer. Then his answer is correct with our objective reality. And lastly, his answer is completely useless to us."
(in eastern soviet republics, philosophy was not in high regards, because the peoples governments were supposed to be philosophical (a la Marx) government, with in theory, very high standards)
A philosopher takes his friend to a magic show. After the usual business of vanishing a few small mammals, the magician's assistant lies in a magic box, and the magician, with a dramatic flair, begins to saw through the box.
The philosopher's friend leans over and asks What do you think is really going on? The philosopher gives it a moment's thought and replies They're using illusionist skills to give us the impression that he's sawing someone in two, but really he isn't. The philosopher's friend, unsatisfied, asks Right, but how? The philosopher shrugs dismissively, That's really not my department.
B. I hate how applicable this joke is to my life. Except I'm the friend asking, then has to figure all the shit out because all the people around me with degrees cant tell the difference between their ass and a hole in the ground.
The engineer is shocked. -'What, this is like a quarter of what I make in a month - for half an hour's work???'
Plumber shrugs. -'Well, why don't you come join us? Easy work, well paid, no responsibility - just remember to keep mum about your degree, as we're not supposed to hire academics.'
Our engineer contemplates this for a while, applies for a job as a plumber - and gets it.
All is well, good money, no responsibilites - until management requires that they take evening school classes to gain new skills and thus better build socialism. So, grudgingly, our engineer enrolls in a math class and, upon arriving, finds that the teacher wants to establish what the plumbers already know.
-'You over there - could you please come to the blackboard and show us the formula for the area of a circle?' he asks our engineer.
Standing at the blackboard, he suddenly realizes he can't for the life of him remember the formula; while a bit rusty, he soon figures out how to reason it out - furiously writing out integrals on the blackboard, only to find the area of a circle is -(pi)*r^2.
Minus? How did a negative enter into it, he thinks, going over his calculations once again. No, still gets the same result. Sweat building, he turns away from the blackboard for a moment, turning to the other plumbers watching.
As in one voice, they all whisper -'Comrade, you must switch the limits to the integral!'
The "you learn limits in like, 9th grade" comment reminds me of this one:
Two mathematicians are in a bar. The first one says to the second that the average person knows very little about basic mathematics. The second one disagrees, and claims that most people can cope with a reasonable amount of math. The first mathematician goes off to the washroom, and in his absence the second calls over the waitress. He tells her that in a few minutes, after his friend has returned, he will call her over and ask her a question. All she has to do is answer one third x cubed.
She repeats "one thir -- dex cue"?
He repeats "one third x cubed".
She says, "one thir dex cuebd"?
Yes, that's right, he says. So she agrees, and goes off mumbling to herself, "one thir dex cuebd...".
The first guy returns and the second proposes a bet to prove his point, that most people do know something about basic math. He says he will ask the blonde waitress an integral, and the first laughingly agrees. The second man calls over the waitress and asks "what is the integral of x squared?".
The waitress says "one third x cubed" and while walking away, turns back and says over her shoulder "plus a constant!"
4 * integrate sqrt(r^2 - x^2) w.r.t. x from x=0 to x=r
x^2 + y^2 = r^2
=> y = sqrt(r^2 - x^2)
If you've never set up and worked a few, try the dx version and the dy version, then maybe fiddle with a few others. They all work.
The concentric rings one is trivial to work out. Integrate over r from 0 to R. Each ring at radius r has thickness dr, and has length 2 pi r, treated simply as a rectangle, which is "close enough" since each is arbitrarily thin. Then the integral is
int_0^R 2 pi r dr = 2pi r^2/2 from 0 to R = pi R^2.
A really pretty one cuts the circle into wedges, then rearranges them by alternating direction to make a "rectangle" approx r high, approx pi * r wide, with bumpy top and bottom. In the limit this has area pi * r * r, and can be shown to kids without needing calculus.
And it's not magic or circular, since pi is defined (in this case...) as the ratio of circumference to diameter.
Value inside the integral is area of thin triangle of height r and base rdθ.
As such, a perfect russian joke.
A mathematician, a physicist and a biologist are flying in a air balloon and are lost.
They encounter a man walking below:
The biologist asks him: "do you know, where we are?"
"..." the man looks up and says nothing
The physicist ask him: "can you please tell us, where we are!"
"..." after a while the man says: "yes".
The mathematician remarks, ah, he must be a logician. The others: "how do you know?"
"Well, for once he needed a lot of time to answer. Then his answer is logically correct. And lastly, his answer is completely useless to us."
Wait - are they dead and in heaven!?!
“Think of a comedian.” There probably isn’t a 10x that comedian for you.
“Find the first person to tell you a joke live next week; considering them as a proxy for average, there is almost surely a 10x comedian out there.”
To me the difference in 'funniness' between a random standup special (even one that is 'good' enough to get a distribution deal) and for example some of Eddie Izzard's best is easily 1000x.
But of course my least favorite stand up special is also literally the funniest thing someone else has ever seen. So maybe it washed out in aggregate.
Tom Segura, Ali Wong, Nikki Glaser, Bill Burr, Mark Normand, Andrew Santino - 5x
Dave Chappelle, John Mulaney, Louis CK - 10x
My hypothesis is there’s a massive spread in performance in comics, in programmers, and in most fields that are substantially creative and when people argue “there is no 10x <foo>” that it’s more like because their reference frame is higher than mine.
- James Acaster
============
A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts:
"Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend. I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."
The man below says, "Yes, you are in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above this field. You are between 40 and 42 degrees North latitude, and between 58 and 60 degrees West longitude."
"You must be a programmer," says the balloonist.
"I am," replies the man. "How did you know?"
"Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost."
The man below says, "You must be a project manager"
"I am," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"
"Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You have made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are in the exact same position you were in before we met, but now it is somehow my fault."
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