Newsgroups: rec.humor
Subject: Hunting Elephants
Date: 25 Sep 1993 18:56:42 GMT
Organization: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  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 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.

Engineers hunt elephants by going to Africa, catching grey animals and
stopping when any one of them weighs within plus or minus 15 percent
of any previously observed elephants.

Economists don't hunt elephants, but they believe that if elephants
are paid enough, they'll 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 colour to the efficiency of elephant-hunting
strategies, if someone else will only identify the elephants.

Politicians don't hunt elephants, but 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 pre-hunted before
the vice-president sees them.  If the vice-president does see a
nonpre-hunted 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 big 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.

Salespeople don't hunt elephants, but spend their time selling the
elephants they haven't caught, for delivery two days before the season
opens.

Software salespeople ship the first thing they catch and write up an
invoice for an elephant.
	
Hardware salespeople catch rabbits, paint them grey, and sell them as
desktop elephants.