Mathematicians hunt elephants by going to Africa, throwing out everything that is not an elephant, and catching whatever is left. Experienced mathematicians will attempt to prove the existence of a least one unique elephant before preceeding 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:
Experienced computer programmers modify Algorithm A by placing a known elephant in Cairo to ensure that the algorithm will terminate. Assembly language programmers prefers 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 don follow herds around arguing about who owns the dropping. Software lawyers will claim that the own an entire herd based on the look and feel of one dropping.
Vice-presidents of engineering, research and developement 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 berfore the vice-president sees them. If the vice-president does see a nonpre-hunted elephant, the staff will:
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 salepeople ship the first thing they catch and write up an invoice for an elephant. Hardware salepeople catch rabbits, paint them grey, and sell them as desktop elephants.
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