A pseudo-followup in my ongoing series to “mathify” things:

• Beards turn laziness into awesomeness.
• My body is a filter. Coffee goes in and sarcasm comes out.
• My computer helps me the further I am from it.

Somewhat related, The System’s Order of Magnitude and of course my Pile System.

Here it is, comic number 599, which means the next one is the big 600! Technically we are past 600, as there’s one I accidently screwed up the number and a few in the archive that don’t really have numbers or don’t fit into the number scheme. Still, exciting to see round numbers.

For those of you that came out to Connecticon this past weekend and said hello at the table OR came to Super Art Fight, thank you so much. It was great to see Rick, ParasitePaladin, Allison, Ray, and all the rest of you who came by to say hi or bought something. And to you newbies, hello. This is my website, hope you like.

To say Connecticon was a success would be an understatement. It was huge. I did the 2nd best sales I’ve ever done at a con and had $0 in costs for the trip, as they were all covered since I was a guest. Not to mention, lots of people came by and said they read the comic which always makes me feel better. No crazy lines or anything, but it’s a wonderful reminder that people actually read this thing I put time into and post on the Internet. The numbers in analytics and the comments I see are written by people who wonder why I didn’t update on Monday, who share it with friends and coworkers, etc. It’s an amazing human connection that I absolutely love, and rejuvenates me until the next show.

Now excuse me while I work on The System Book 1….

Math jokes. Right?

This is based on the Mean Chocolate Chip Cookies I saw a while back, and thought about again when I was baking muffins yesterday.

I think Dante would back me up on this.

Remember as I said Saturday, any purchases of original prints / posters through the end of this month will have money donated to breast cancer research! Especially the last comic on breasts and typefaces. Just place any order from http://www.hilariawesome.com/ for any comic print and I’ll do the rest. At the end of the month I’ll post a tally of how it goes.

Speaking of Saturday, I didn’t get to a comic on Friday but did post it on Saturday. If you didn’t get a chance to see it, I recommend it. You should check it out here.

Greetings, Slashdot-ers!

We here at Rosscott, Inc. glady welcome our new Slashdot overlords. Seriously though, look around! There’s plenty of comics in the veins of flying cars, charts, and other things that I would consider Slashdot-approved. If you really love the comic (this one, or in general) there’s even the HilariAwesome store where I sell prints of the comic, shirts and hopefully more soon. Finally, so you never have to actually look at the site again, there’s an RoSS feed of the site. Subscribe.

After 140 years, the Boltzmann Equation has been solved. the Boltzmann Equation has been verified, “by solving the equation for all types of collisions, including the type of small-angle collision never previously included in the analysis.” (Thanks, Heath!) Sure, it’s about gaseous behavior (heh) but I’m guessing any guys that can solve that might as well be hooking up a flying car. Why they didn’t just look in the back of the book for the answer to the Boltzmann Equation decades ago is beyond me.

Site Update: There’s now alt texts with comics. Only the last few, but I may go back and add some here and there, just to keep you guys on your toes. Oh, and the comic images? Just click ‘em and it’ll take you through the archive. Quick and easy!

Yesterday’s comic, The System 333: Full Gadget Ratio has been doing quite well for itself. It made it to the front of Reddit for a hot second, has spread around pretty well on Twitter, etc. However, a bunch of people more mathy than I, thinking I’m secretly trying to be XKCD (hint: XKCD has yet to do a comic about crop marks and bleed), are having some trouble with the equation. Fair, since I spend too much time on the graphic and little on making the equation work. Case in point:

Why take so much time on the graphic only to have such a poorly thought out equation?

I’m not normally one to obsess over others’ comments on the comic, but they have a valid point. Systemics, let’s give this chart an equation to be proud of! Given the variables at hand, help me come up with something better. Use whatever units of measurement you feel appropriate and all the information at hand, and post them here in the comments. I’ll update this chart and give credit where due the best I can. In fact, I’ll be picking at random one of the people who helps in the comments to get a FREE PRINT of this comic from our store, HilariAwesome.com!

UPDATE: It’s been a while, I know. Congrats to Systemic Harris who submitted an awesome entry that will be reflected in the original post, and will also be receiving a print of this comic! Check out the original comic to see the mathy update.

UPDATE-UPDATE: I know what you’re thinking. The equation is crap! Here’s how you can help me fix it!

Everything you need to know to calculate the true size of the gadgets you carry. There are way more factors than you may have considered. I invite you to calculate yours, and post in the comments. Use standard metric system for all measurements. As for Planck’s Apple Constant (based on his original work on Planck’s Constant), everyone knows that’s a physical constant used to describe the size of the smallest iPod available used in the pricing of running arm bands and quantum mechanics.

Systemic Harris has helped us better define the Full Gadget Ratio, with an equation that has now been reflected in the above image. Here’s his breakdown:

On the FGR of Mobile Devices:

Clearly, FGR should be a measure of how bulky/inconvenient the object is, amortized over how useful it is. So:

FGR, the base term at first glance should be affine in S,A,B, as these all contribute more or less additively to bulkiness. T is an issue, though for now we can add it in as well. I see lots of people use S*T or some such, which is clearly not right, though my S+T isn’t much better. Really, the question is whether S is a volume, or the bulkiest dimension, or maybe, it’s the largest face divided by the opposite direction (screen size divided by thickness, say). The question is whether S should be a measure of useful dimensions vs. non-useful dimension, like the latter, or a general matter of how bulky something is to carry around, so a simple volume, or the bulkiest dimension. The interaction w/ T then plays into that. Not sure the best way to handle it. The most accurate would be to break S into the three dimensions and apply T directly, recomputing the volume, but that will complicate the device enormously. So for now we leave it linear.

If a device is twice as useful, it’s clearly functionally half as bulky, so divide by U.

Higher H makes it more useful, but how? On the one hand, H should essentially contribute to higher U, as you can’t use it if the battery is dead, so will use it more. But only past a point, as if it can do, say, 24 or 48 hours w/out recharge, it’s not an inconvenience to recharge every so often. So replacing 1/U by (1 + 1/H)/U is good for bulkiness, as low H decreases effective usefulness a lot, but past a point high H is diminishing returns.

Additionally, though, H plays off against A, as the longer it lasts w/out power the less you need to carry the power adapter around. So perhaps replace the A term by A/H, that is, the bulk of the adaptors is reduced by you maybe not needing to carry them around. Really this should be a threshold effect of some kind, though, where either you are carrying the adaptors around or you aren’t, so maybe multiply A by an appropriate shifted Heaviside function of H. Still, the linear approximation is ok for now. And of course, that you rolled chargers & adapters into the same category muddles the issue.

The worry factor increases bulkiness, presumably linearly. But, if newer versions are out, you don’t mind it breaking as much because you want to buy the new one. So there should be a W/N factor in there (where obviously we must count N as the number of generations at least as new as this one, to avoid division by 0). Again, though once it is old enough you don’t worry at all, but this shouldn’t go to 0, so it should be (1+ W/N).

And the constant should definitely be used as a multiplier, to get the units (whatever they are) to come out right.
So maybe:

FGR = (S + T + A/H + B) * (1+1/H)/U * (1 + W/N) * h, or reordered to look a little nicer

FGR = h(1+W/N)(1+1/H)(S+T+A/H+B)/U

This is why I outsource the really mathy stuff. It’s just easier that way.

UPDATE: As always, if you want a print of this comic (or any comic), they are all only $10 at our online store, Hilariawesome.com!