operations
Original: operations on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Caption (in a banner at top): WHY DO 98% OF MATH TEACHERS DO THIS?
Teacher (a woman with dark hair, round white glasses, and a yellow shirt, gesturing with open hands): ADDITION IS PUTTING THINGS TOGETHER, SUBTRACTION IS REMOVING THINGS, MULTIPLICATION IS REPEATED ADDITION, DIVISION IS DETERMINING HOW MUCH OF ONE NUMBER IS CONTAINED IN ANOTHER, EXPONENTIATION IS REPEATED MULTIPLICATION AND LOGARITHMS UNDO EXPONENTIATION BY UNFATHOMABLE DARK SORCERY.
On the chalkboard behind her: math symbols including +, -, /, x, < and a small skull-and-crossbones icon.
Votey:
A dark, ominous figure (its face barely visible): ONE DOES NOT SPEAK OF THE LOGARITHM. ONLY OF THAT WHICH IT IS NOT.
Teacher (a woman with dark hair, round white glasses, and a yellow shirt, gesturing with open hands): ADDITION IS PUTTING THINGS TOGETHER, SUBTRACTION IS REMOVING THINGS, MULTIPLICATION IS REPEATED ADDITION, DIVISION IS DETERMINING HOW MUCH OF ONE NUMBER IS CONTAINED IN ANOTHER, EXPONENTIATION IS REPEATED MULTIPLICATION AND LOGARITHMS UNDO EXPONENTIATION BY UNFATHOMABLE DARK SORCERY.
On the chalkboard behind her: math symbols including +, -, /, x, < and a small skull-and-crossbones icon.
Votey:
A dark, ominous figure (its face barely visible): ONE DOES NOT SPEAK OF THE LOGARITHM. ONLY OF THAT WHICH IT IS NOT.
Alt text
A webcomic about how math teachers describe logarithms. The main panel shows a math teacher—a woman with dark hair, round white glasses, and a yellow shirt—standing in front of a green chalkboard with arms spread, palms up. A banner above reads "WHY DO 98% OF MATH TEACHERS DO THIS?" She lists definitions in a confident sweep: addition is putting things together, subtraction is removing things, multiplication is repeated addition, division is how much of one number is contained in another, exponentiation is repeated multiplication—"AND LOGARITHMS UNDO EXPONENTIATION BY UNFATHOMABLE DARK SORCERY." Tellingly, the chalkboard behind her bears a tiny skull-and-crossbones among the math symbols. The joke: every operation gets a clear, intuitive explanation except logarithms, which are hand-waved as forbidden magic. In the votey (the small bonus panel), a menacing dark figure with a barely-visible face intones, "ONE DOES NOT SPEAK OF THE LOGARITHM. ONLY OF THAT WHICH IT IS NOT," treating the logarithm as an unspeakable, eldritch entity.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.