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Webcomic / Spiked Math

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Spiked Math is a defunct math-themed web comic that can be described as xkcd, but only focused on math, and with triangles with heads instead of stick figures. Additionally, some of the comics feature numbers, matrices, etc. as characters. These have rounded, rectangular bodies and normal heads. If you decide to read the comic, expect a lot of math puns and comics that poke fun at mathematicians/professors/students.

Compare fellow math webcomic (x, why?).


Tropes used by this webcomic:

  • Alt Text: Some of the comics have text that shows up when you hover over an image.
  • Black Comedy Rape: Implied in "Sex Proofs", which ends with a censored "proof by brute force".
  • But Wait, There's More!: Parodied in "MathWOW". The ad for MathWOW doesn't use this exact phrase, but does point out that your $400+ MathWOW comes with a "CRAZY protractor" with an estimated value of 32 cents.
  • Calculator Spelling: In "God vs. Satan", Satan tricks God into making a calculation that results in 7734 (hELL upside-down). However, a bonus comic has God get revenge by making Satan calculate 537818 (BIBLES upside-down).
  • Cheating with the Milkman: The first comic implies that the milkman is Junior's true father.
  • Chocolate Baby: A mathematical equivalent. Mom is sin^2(x), her husband Alex is tan^2(x), the milkman is cos^2(x) and Junior is 1. This implies that the milkman is Junior's true father, as it's sin^2(x)+cos^2(x) that makes 1.
  • Comeback Tomorrow: It's not quite about insults, but "The perfect response!" suggests that teachers who come up with perfect responses too late can just use them in the next semester instead.
  • Convenience Store Gift Shopping: In "Happy birthday buddy", the "buddy" gets a statistics book for his birthday even though he's known to hate mathematics. He accuses the giver of forgetting his birthday and just grabbing a random book from his bookshelf.
  • Digital Piracy Is Evil: Parodied in "MIAA", where a mathematician is accused of copyright infringement for using and sharing his own theorems.
  • A Dog Ate My Homework:
    • "Spiked Math's excuse guide to not doing your math homework" provides a lot of... interesting excuses for not doing your math homework.
      I already did it in a parallel universe.
    • Inverted in "Quiz Today", where the professor forgets to make the quiz and considers several excuses, including "my dog ate the quizes".
  • Double Entendre: In one comic, a male matrix wants to multiply with a female matrix, but she tells him that he's too small for her, so he decides to multiply by himself.
  • Fantastic Racism "Anti-symmetric" portrays the anti-symmetric matrices as bigoted against symmetric matrices.
  • Fun with Acronyms: In "Erdos Number", a character creates the Paul Erdős Number Identification System. to help you find your Erdős number.
  • Heh Heh, You Said "X": In "Heads or Tails", a student snickers when the professor says, "what the probability of getting head?" (Of course, he's asking for the probability of getting heads.)
  • Hypocritical Humor: In comic 562:
    Professor: Never ever use your cell phone while in my classrom. Hold on, I must make this very important call!
  • "L" Is for "Dyslexia": Averted in comic number sixteen, as the dyslexic does the problem wrong, not the phrase.
  • Mouthful of Pi:
    • Parodied in "Guide to Acting Like a Math Geek", which suggests memorizing the first three digits and making up the rest because no one will care enough to check if you are right.
    • In "Math Club Rules", a new member is forced to recite pi.
  • Oh, Crap!: In comic number seven, the pigeon says this when he is forced to be in the same box as a smelly pigeon.
  • Oven Logic: In "Light Bulbs", the mathematician apparently thinks that "4 x 60 watts" is the same as "240 watts".
  • Payment Plan Pitch: Parodied in "MathWOW", which requires 4.733 NP-easy payments of $93.72.
  • Playing a Tree: "Accomplishments" lists "playing" a sunflower in a school play as the lowest accomplishment for an actor.
  • Ridiculous Procrastinator: In "Procrastination", a student gets an assignment that's due on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. He starts working on it Monday night. Then the T.A. spends a week playing World of Warcraft instead of marking the papers like he's supposed to.
  • Shout-Out:
    • "Magic the Gathering" turns the Banach-Tarski theorem into a Magic: The Gathering card.
    • "xkcd Nim" and "Prime Scrabble" feature an xkcd stick figure.
  • Tally Marks on the Prison Wall: In Fibonacci's 8th Term, Fibonacci draws tally marks on the prison wall while serving his term. Unusually, the tally marks are grouped according to the Fibonacci sequence.
  • Top Ten List: Parodied in "The Top One List of... ", which is a top one list... of top one lists. Its only entry is itself.
  • [Trope Name]: "A ____ walks into a bar" is about the general form of a "a ___ walks into a bar" joke.
  • Visual Pun: Fibonacci's 8th Term. It refers to both the 8th term in the Fibonacci sequence and Fibonacci's prison term.

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