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How to Hunt Elephants
HOW TO HUNT ELEPHANTS
How do you hunt elephants..?
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 hemselves.
STATISTICIANS hunt the 1st animal they see N times & call it an elephant.
CON******TS 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 con******ts 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.
COMPUTER SCIENTISTS hunt elephants by excercising 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.
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 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 president does see a nonprehunted 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.
SALESPEOPLE don't hunt elephants but spend their time selling 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 gray, and sell
them as DESKTOP ELEPHANTS
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