Hunting an elephant
MATHEMATICIANS | hunt elephants by going to Africa, throwing out everything that is not an elephant and catching one of whatever is left. |
EXPERIENCED MATHEMATICIANS | will attempt to prove the existence of at least one unique elephant before proceeding to step 1 as a subordinate exercise. |
PROFESSORS OF MATHEMATICS | will prove the existence of at least one unique elephant and then leave the detection and capture of an actual elephant as an exercise for their graduate students. |
COMPUTER SCIENTISTS | hunt elephants
by exercising algorithm A: Go to Africa. Start at the Cape of Good Hope. Work nortward in an orderly manner, traversing the continent alternately east and west. During each traverse pass, a./ Catch each animal seen. b./ Compare each animal cought to a known elephant. c./ Stop when match is detected. |
EXPERIENCED COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS | modify algorithm A by placing a known elephant in Cairo to ensure that the algorithm will terminate. |
ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE PROGRAMMERS | prefer to execute algorithm A on their hands and knees. |
ENGINEERS | hunt elephants by going to Africa, catching gray animals at random, and stopping when any one of them weighs within plus minus 15 percent of any previously observed elephant. |
ECONOMISTS | don´t hunt elephants, but they believe that if elephants are paid enough, they will hunt themselves. |
STATISTICIANS | hunt the first animal they see N times and call it an elephant. |
CONSULTANTS | don´t hunt elephants, and many have never hunted anything at all, but they can be hired by the hour to advice those people who do. |
OPERATIONS RESEARCH CONSULTANTS | can also measure the correlation of hat size and bullet color to the efficiency of elephant hunting strategies, if someone else will only identify the elephants. |
POLITICIANS | don´t hunt elephants, but they will share the elephants you catch with the people who voted for them. |
LAWYERS | don´t hunt elephants, but they do follow the herds around arguing about who owns the droppings. |
SOFTWARE LAWYERS | will claim that they own an entire herd based on the look and feel of one dropping. |
SENIOR MANAGERS | set broad elephant-hunting policy based on the assumption that elephants are just like field mice, but with deeper voices. |
QUALITY ASSURANCE INSPECTORS | ignore the elephants and look for mistakes the other hunters made when they were packing the jeep. |
SALES PEOPLE | don´t hunt elephants but spend their time selling elephants they haven´t caught, for delivery two days before the season opens. |
SOFTWARE SALES PEOPLE | ship the first thing they catch and write up an invoice for an elephant. |
HARDWARE SALES PEOPLE | catch rabbits, paint them grey, and sell them as desktop elephants. |