2011-07-02
Explanation
This comic plays on the inspirational quote "Once you truly understand mathematics, you will see beauty everywhere." A woman reads this in a book and takes it to heart. The scene then jumps to "Later..." where a shirtless man with glasses notices she has been staring at him all day and flirtatiously asks, "You like what you see, baby?" In the final panel, she responds "Sooo... beautiful..." -- but the red dashed lines overlaid on the man''s body reveal she is not admiring him physically. She is tracing mathematical curves across his torso, with a formula visible at the bottom of the panel.
The humor comes from the misdirection: the setup implies a romantic or sexual attraction, but the punchline reveals she is literally seeing mathematical beauty in the curves and geometry of the human form, exactly as the quote promised. She has internalized the mathematical worldview so thoroughly that she cannot look at another person without seeing equations and geometric figures. The man thinks he is being checked out, but he is actually being graphed.
The votey panel extends the joke with the question "Sexiest abs?" answered by "Cycloid abs" -- referring to a cycloid, a specific mathematical curve generated by a point on a rolling circle. This reinforces that in this woman''s mathematically-enchanted worldview, physical attractiveness is measured entirely in terms of elegant geometric curves rather than conventional standards.