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==Explanation==
 
==Explanation==
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{{incomplete|Complete but about half of the explanation recently seemed insufficiently related to the comic.}}
  
 
[[White Hat]] is observing a {{w|physicist}}, [[Cueball]], who is staring at some (in the comic unreadable; see [https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/math_work_2x.png high resolution version]) equations and diagrams on a {{w|chalkboard}}. White Hat is neither a physicist nor a {{w|mathematician}}, and seems to glorify those professions. He wishes he understood Cueball's work and "the beauty on display here."  People who profess a love for mathematics often cite the beauty they see in pure math, how things work out so perfectly, as the reason they love math.  
 
[[White Hat]] is observing a {{w|physicist}}, [[Cueball]], who is staring at some (in the comic unreadable; see [https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/math_work_2x.png high resolution version]) equations and diagrams on a {{w|chalkboard}}. White Hat is neither a physicist nor a {{w|mathematician}}, and seems to glorify those professions. He wishes he understood Cueball's work and "the beauty on display here."  People who profess a love for mathematics often cite the beauty they see in pure math, how things work out so perfectly, as the reason they love math.  
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The joke is that Cueball as a physicist is doing something instead quite simple and relatable: Avoiding hard work. Solving many kinds of constraints for two unknowns isn't necessarily difficult, but can be depending on the details. Cueball clearly thinks a solution is possible but would rather find an easier route. The same could be said about the field of mathematics in general: A proof is beautiful to a mathematician when it provides {{w|aesthetic}} pleasure, usually associated with being easy to understand. A proof is elegant when it is both easy to understand and correct, and mathematical solutions are profound when useful. Record numbers of mathematics interest groups and their forums in which such work is done exist today, from academic journals predating the use of electricity to a plethora of internet math and science fora such as {{w|Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Mathematics|Wikipedia Reference Desks}} and Reddit's [https://reddit.com/r/theydidthemath /r/theydidthemath] forum, which fueled a [https://i.imgur.com/l1r1VEE.png resurgence of the phrase "they did the math" as a search term in 2014,] because it was included in the sidebar of the [https://reddit.com/r/xkcd /r/xkcd] subreddit, where it remains five years hence, between "Linguistics" and "Ask Historians," suggesting that the term was popularized by Xkcd fans after [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=they+did+the+math&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1980&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cthey%20did%20the%20math%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bthey%20did%20the%20math%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BThey%20did%20the%20math%3B%2Cc0#t4%3B%2Cthey%20did%20the%20math%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bthey%20did%20the%20math%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BThey%20did%20the%20math%3B%2Cc0 its initial appearance c. 1988.] The proliferation of mathematics fora is certainly also due to the quickly increasing overall level of education and rapidly growing numbers of internet users.
 
The joke is that Cueball as a physicist is doing something instead quite simple and relatable: Avoiding hard work. Solving many kinds of constraints for two unknowns isn't necessarily difficult, but can be depending on the details. Cueball clearly thinks a solution is possible but would rather find an easier route. The same could be said about the field of mathematics in general: A proof is beautiful to a mathematician when it provides {{w|aesthetic}} pleasure, usually associated with being easy to understand. A proof is elegant when it is both easy to understand and correct, and mathematical solutions are profound when useful. Record numbers of mathematics interest groups and their forums in which such work is done exist today, from academic journals predating the use of electricity to a plethora of internet math and science fora such as {{w|Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Mathematics|Wikipedia Reference Desks}} and Reddit's [https://reddit.com/r/theydidthemath /r/theydidthemath] forum, which fueled a [https://i.imgur.com/l1r1VEE.png resurgence of the phrase "they did the math" as a search term in 2014,] because it was included in the sidebar of the [https://reddit.com/r/xkcd /r/xkcd] subreddit, where it remains five years hence, between "Linguistics" and "Ask Historians," suggesting that the term was popularized by Xkcd fans after [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=they+did+the+math&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1980&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cthey%20did%20the%20math%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bthey%20did%20the%20math%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BThey%20did%20the%20math%3B%2Cc0#t4%3B%2Cthey%20did%20the%20math%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bthey%20did%20the%20math%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BThey%20did%20the%20math%3B%2Cc0 its initial appearance c. 1988.] The proliferation of mathematics fora is certainly also due to the quickly increasing overall level of education and rapidly growing numbers of internet users.
  
βˆ’
The title text continues Cueball's thought process, with the possibility of using an automatic equation solver to find the unknowns. Equation solvers are not often considered beautiful ways to address purely mathematical problems, even if they are often the most efficient and in that sense elegant solutions to applied problems in engineering. Using a formal solver with symbolic, numeric, or both methods requires making sure that the constraints (e.g. equations) are entered correctly, with parentheses balanced in their correct locations for the solution to succeed. This might be a further joke about Cueball's laziness, suggesting that he doesn't even have the energy to check whether his parentheses are placed correctly. At the same time it might show how far away he is from finding the real solution: Any missing, misplaced or spurious parenthesis will most likely immediately invalidate the whole equation system. While the {{w|mathematical beauty|beauty of mathematics}} and pure physics may not be associated with automatic solvers in spreadsheets, general optimization methods are considered elegant in applied physics and engineering, with [http://entsphere.com/pub/pdf/1957%20Jaynes,%20ShannonMaxEntBoltzmann.pdf Jaynes (1957)] cited more than 12,000 times on Google Scholar, including by [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234147180_Maximum_Entropy_Image_Restoration_in_Astronomy a paper cited] by the [https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.01286 first black hole image astronomers] for example.
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The title text continues Cueball's thought process, with the possibility of using an automatic equation solver to find the unknowns. Equation solvers are not often considered beautiful ways to address purely mathematical problems, even if they are often the most efficient and in that sense elegant solutions to applied problems in engineering. Using a formal solver with symbolic, numeric, or both methods requires making sure that the constraints (e.g. equations) are entered correctly, with parentheses balanced in their correct locations for the solution to succeed. This might be a further joke about Cueball's laziness, suggesting that he doesn't even have the energy to check whether his parentheses are placed correctly. At the same time it might show how far away he is from finding the real solution. While the {{w|mathematical beauty|beauty of mathematics}} and pure physics may not be associated with automatic solvers in spreadsheets, general optimization methods are considered elegant in applied physics and engineering, with [http://entsphere.com/pub/pdf/1957%20Jaynes,%20ShannonMaxEntBoltzmann.pdf Jaynes (1957)] cited more than 12,000 times on Google Scholar, including by [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234147180_Maximum_Entropy_Image_Restoration_in_Astronomy a paper cited] by the [https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.01286 first black hole image astronomers] for example.
  
 
===Examples of bivariate optimization===
 
===Examples of bivariate optimization===

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