Six Ways of Looking at a Cat
Six mathematicians look at the same grumpy mustached cat and each sees something different: a symmetry group, a delta spike, a point mass, a biconditional, a Poisson process, a two-holed torus.
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Cartoon by Ben Orlin, Math with Bad Drawings. https://cartoons.mathwithbaddrawings.com/2017-08-02-six-ways-of-looking-at-a-cat/ (CC BY-NC 4.0)Transcript
[1] Algebraist: The algebraist sees the cat's symmetry group: S_cat = S₂.
[2] Analyst: The analyst graphs cat activity over time: zero everywhere except one sudden spike, a Dirac delta.
[3] Applied Mathematician: The applied mathematician thinks: 'Assume cat is an inert point mass'… seems right.
[4] Logician: The logician concludes: sunny patch iff cat.
[5] Probabilist: The probabilist models cat scratching as a Poisson process: ~ Po(λ).
[6] Topologist: The topologist sees the cat as a two-holed torus.