XKCD: an inside perspective
Randall Munroe, creator of the hilarious webcomic XKCD, gave a talk at work last week, and it was pretty interesting. I bring this up because he discussed the current comic in his talk. When the Google Labs Aptitude Test came out, Randall decided he was going to apply, but he didn’t want to turn it in until he had gotten all of the questions. He couldn’t get the resistor question, and eventually asked his physics professor about it. They filled up an entire blackboard without getting anywhere on the problem (see the alt text in the comic). Randall gave up on the GLAT and never turned it in. However, he eventually looked up some literature on the resistor problem: it wasn’t actually solved until the 60’s, and wasn’t solved elegantly until the 90’s. Both proofs required math so complex that he didn’t recognize it. He no longer feels bad about not solving the problem, though.
One of the other things he mentioned in the talk is that now that people read his comic, he has nothing new to talk about at parties; everyone has heard all of his stories and jokes already.