Comic #2 — Formula Fishing

[Note to readers! I am hoping that eventually the artwork will catch up with the jokes and that the jokes will eventually catch up to being funny. If you have any suggestions, tips, exercises, guidance, etc. to help me improve the artwork, please tell me! I’d love if you left a comment with your suggestions (or anything else you want to say).]

Formula Fishing

Math Misery: It’s a lot easier to just keep randomly trying formulas than to actually think about the problem.

5 thoughts on “Comic #2 — Formula Fishing

  1. Pingback: Global Math Department is Thankful for YOU / Global Math Department

  2. Archelleo

    Formula fishing can not assist learners to learn the basics. It’s only after analysis of the question and finding what you have been given that you can select the right formula to use . What is given must lead to the known.

    Reply
  3. Kenneth Tilton

    Googled “formula fishing”, learned a lot about Formula boats and catching gill-bearing aquatic craniate animals that lack limbs with digits. But I will take your word for it.

    I think you artwork is great so I cannot help with that.

    Re the humor, I always leave my audience some work. In this case, maybe just leave off the thought bubble altogether, make them connect the dots. But do not make them work too hard: I love the “x” hook, but snip a Bodoni/STIX italic “x” from somewhere so it triggers the connection (your italicism of the “x” was noted and admired). I am undecided whether you want to go further and have the hook be “x=”, and whether all the fishy expressions should be TeX typeset. Left as an exercise for the artiste.

    Reply
  4. mehtamatics

    I regret to inform you that, after many years spent teaching mathematics, I find your message unsettling. It suggests that it is cool to go formula fishing but it isn’t – or should not be. Basic dimensional analysis should tell you that if you are looking for an area then 1/2*bh or pi*r^2 may be valid but 2pi*r and mx+b are non-starters!

    Reply
    1. Manan Shah Post author

      It’s supposed to be unsettling — formula fishing is an approach that (many) students take to “learning” mathematics. I’m not endorsing such an approach.

      Reply

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