Fun_People Archive
30 Apr
A Hunting We Will Go...

Date: Fri, 30 Apr 93 11:41:45 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: A Hunting We Will Go...

From: Keith Bostic <bostic@vangogh.CS.Berkeley.EDU>

    HOW TO HUNT ELEPHANTS
    ---------------------
How do you hunt elephants..?

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 excercise.  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
excercise for their graduate students.

COMPUTER SCIENTISTS hunt elephants by excercising Algorithm A:
1. Go to Africa.
2. Start at the Cape of Good Hope.
3. Work northward in an orderly manner, traversing the continent
    alternately east and west.
4. During each traverse pass,
    a. Catch each animal seen.
    b. Compare each animal caught to a known elephant.
    c. Stop when a 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 or 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 1st animal they see N times & 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 advise
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.

VICE PRESIDENTS of engineering, research, and development try
hard to hunt elephants, but their staffs are designed to prevent
it.  When the vice president does get to hunt elephants, the
staff will try to ensure that all possible elephants are
completely prehunted before the vice president sees them.  If the
vice president does see a nonprehunted elephant, the staff will
(1) compliment the vice president's keen eyesight and (2) enlarge
itself to prevent any recurrence.

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.

SALESPEOPLE don't hunt elephants but spend their time selling
elephants they haven't caught, for delivery two days before the
season opens.  Software salespeople ship the first thing they
catch and write up an invoice for an elephant.  Hardware salespeople
catch rabbits, paint them gray, and sell them as DESKTOP ELEPHANTS.

© 1993 Peter Langston