Unfortunately for the joke, mathematicians don’t belong on the scale because they aren’t scientists. Which is why we make a Blues Brothers distinction and say “maths *and* science”, and you’ll also note that mathematicians don’t do experiments or test hypotheses against observation – they’re logical, the rest of us are empirical.

Can physicists be at the top again please? After all, everything else is just stamp collecting.

As a mature-aged undergrad, taking Maths as a co-Major I think there is a lot of elegant [simple] wisdom in that cartoon. A double major in Maths and Psychology must be a fantastic undergrad preparation for ANY Social Science Ph.D.

(2) I’ll add to your advice about browsers and point to xkcd’s text-only service.

(3) I’ll also recommend Joshua Gans’ (of Core Economics) great “add-on including Economists” here based on this.

(4) From empirical evidence (not a large sample tho)
Pr(I_enjoy_an_Australian_blog) = x + Pr(other_author_likes_xkcd)/y

Text only, but not particularly safe for work.

It might be prudent here to post the text from the original image on xkcd.com, which is usually just as insightful as the comic itself:

On the other hand, physicists like to say physics is to math as sex is to masturbation.

When I was studying Psychology I was interested by how many mathematicians who had found their calling in that field. Perhaps they were rats in a previous life?

Well then move to Melbourne and get a gig with the new Life Sciences Supercomputer. All the biotech folks involved are looking for some serious conceptual thinkers with technical rigor to really push the envelope of their new $100 million Grendelised cell cruncher.

And along comes an engineer to work out how to make it actually work, an economist to predict who should benefit from it, a politician to explain to how they got everyone working together to make it pay off and then a KPMG consultant to ensure that no one who can afford it, actually pays for it. Followed well down the track by an MSM pundit to explain in 700 or so words why whatever happened is a good or bad thing. “But while the debate rages back and forth, we can be certain of only one thing. Only the future will prove who’s right. Or not.”