Hunting Elephants*


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

EXPERIENCED MATHEMATICIANS 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 Algorithm A: 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 Algorithm A 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.