prodigy

A four-panel SMBC comic in color. Panel 1: an older woman with grey hair and round glasses tells a younger woman in a red top, "Only young people do revolutionary mathematics." Panel 2: the two walk down a street past pink buildings as the older woman continues, "20 is ancient. 15 is old. 10 is middle-aged." Panel 3: a small red-haired girl in a purple shirt holds up three fingers and shouts, "Three is THIS many," presented as an example of cutting-edge youthful math. Panel 4: a close-up of the two women; the older woman concludes, "It's counter-intuitive, but we must accept it." The joke parodies the idea that mathematical genius belongs only to the young by taking it to an absurd extreme where a toddler counting to three is revolutionary work. Votey (a single black-and-white bonus panel): a tired, skeptical face with eyes closed says, "See my work on inter-universal Teichmuller theory" — a nod to Shinichi Mochizuki's notoriously impenetrable, controversial proof, the punchline being that this is supposedly the work of a youthful prodigy.