2013-06-14
Explanation
This single-panel comic offers a wry observation about the psychological appeal of mathematics. A person holding a pencil cheerfully declares: "Wow! Instead of being angry about twenty things, I'''m really REALLY angry about one thing!" The caption below reads: "This is why doing math is soothing."
The joke captures a real phenomenon that math enthusiasts and students alike can relate to. When you sit down to work on a difficult math problem, all of your scattered everyday frustrations and anxieties get temporarily replaced by a single, intense frustration: the problem you cannot solve. In a paradoxical way, this is actually comforting -- it is easier to deal with one focused source of aggravation than a diffuse cloud of many small worries. The comic suggests that math serves as a kind of meditation or therapy, not because it brings peace, but because it consolidates your anger into a single point of focus.
The votey panel shows a child asking a parent, "Why do you like math?" and the parent responding, "You'''ll understand when you'''re older" -- implying that the stress-consolidation benefit of math only becomes apparent once you are old enough to have accumulated the many adult worries that need consolidating.