THE HUNTING OF ELEPHANTS


* MATHEMATICIANS hunt elephants by going to Africa, throwing out
everything that is not an elephant, and catching one of whatever is left.

* EXPERIENCED MATHMATICIANS 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 this Algorithm:
1. Go to Africa.
2. Start at the Cape of Good Hope.
3. Work northward in an orderly manner, traversing the continent alternately east and west.
4. 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 this Algorithm 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.

* HARDWARE 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 happen to see a 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.

 

Hunting elephants is illegal as ivory well know.

 

* SOFTWARE SALES PEOPLE ship the first thing they catch and write up an invoice for an elephant.

LOL

 

I thought these were all pretty funny

 

lol i like the consultants and software lawyer ones.

 

That's a mathematician for you!

Good one.

 

So true, so true, but we keep the hunters from getting killed by elephants when they forget to pack the elephant-guns.

 

I liked the computer science ones. I think that makes me a loser.

 

This is one of the wittiest things I've ever read.