I was cleaning out some old .doc files today and came across this from back in '93.
**** 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 northward in an orderly manner, traversing the continent
alternately east and west.
- 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 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 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.
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 gray, and sell
them as desktop elephants.