The .375 H and H, left, and the .470 Nitro Express
The .375 H and H, left, and the .470 Nitro Express
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 harvest of an actual elephant as an exercise for their graduate students.
COMPUTER SCIENTISTS hunt elephants by exercising Algorithm A:
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 ENGINEERS hunt elephants by going to Africa, shooting 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 shoot 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 see a non-prehunted 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 shot, for delivery two days before the season opens.
SOFTWARE SALES PEOPLE ship the first thing they shoot and write up an invoice for an elephant.
HARDWARE SALES PEOPLE shoot rabbits, paint them gray, and sell them as desktop elephants.
EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICISTS hunt elephants by shooting everything in Africa with a bazooka and looking for a giant, flying ivory tusk that is theorized to be part of the elephant's primary decay mode. (Actually, since the presence of elephants in Africa is fairly well established, experimental physicists have recently been hunting in Europe and North America where they are convinced that if only they build a big enough bazooka they'll surely find the elephant they're looking for.)
THEORETICAL PHYSICISTS don't actually hunt elephants, but they argue a lot about whether an elephant that an experimental phsycist may have shot (but might have missed) can reasonably be modeled by a half dead elephant.