arbitrarily
Original: arbitrarily on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Caption (yellow banner at top): FUNTIME ACTIVITY: GOING TO MATH LECTURES AND USING THE WORD "ARBITRARILY" THE WAY ITS USED EVERYWHERE OUTSIDE OF MATHEMATICS
Professor (an older bearded man at a chalkboard, pointing to a written "N"): Consider an arbitrarily large number.
Student (a woman with reddish-brown hair, seen from behind, raising her hand): Fifty three!
Votey:
Handwritten on a notepad:
"A is the set of all arbitrarily large numbers."
"A = {53, 42, 1005}"
(The letter A is written as a blackboard-bold/double-struck ℂ-style symbol.)
Professor (an older bearded man at a chalkboard, pointing to a written "N"): Consider an arbitrarily large number.
Student (a woman with reddish-brown hair, seen from behind, raising her hand): Fifty three!
Votey:
Handwritten on a notepad:
"A is the set of all arbitrarily large numbers."
"A = {53, 42, 1005}"
(The letter A is written as a blackboard-bold/double-struck ℂ-style symbol.)
Alt text
A single-panel SMBC comic. A yellow caption banner reads: "FUNTIME ACTIVITY: GOING TO MATH LECTURES AND USING THE WORD 'ARBITRARILY' THE WAY ITS USED EVERYWHERE OUTSIDE OF MATHEMATICS." An older bearded professor stands at a green chalkboard, pointing at a written letter N, with a speech bubble saying "Consider an arbitrarily large number." In the foreground a woman with reddish-brown hair, viewed from behind with her hand raised, eagerly answers "Fifty three!" — treating "arbitrarily large" as if it just means a randomly picked big-ish number instead of its mathematical meaning. Votey (bonus panel): a handwritten note on a notepad reads "A is the set of all arbitrarily large numbers," followed by "A = {53, 42, 1005}", with A drawn as a fancy double-struck math symbol — listing a few arbitrary numbers as the set.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.