Cake
Statistician cooks
Triangle-person is holding up a bag of flour and sugar, saying: “Let’s bake a cake.”
Triangle-person is shown from the back, they are pouring the flour and sugar out onto a table behind them.
Triangle-person is shown showing the table off with a flourish. On the table are two piles of flour and sugar. They overlap unrealistically and have a bell-curve shape. The Triangle-person says: Now we’re cooking with Gauss!
“Now we’re cooking”, is an English phrase meant to convey that the speaker is well on their way, or is in the midst of a task. This phrase is often strenghtened by adding “Now we’re cooking with gas”, which is intended to convey that not only we are progressing, but also doing so swiftly (presumably because cooking with gas is faster than cooking over a bonfire).
The “bell” shape the flour and sugar take in this comic is known as a normal distribution. This curve appears all over statistics and was formalised by Carl Friedrich Gauss, thus it’s also known as a Gaussian distribution.
As a side-note, I’m not sure if the sugar and flour will naturally form a Gaussian distribution when poured out. Sand when poured out will form a nice and straight conical shape, but it doesn’t have sugar’s edges or the flour’s stickiness. Pouring violently will also change the geometry of the resulting shape.
If we really wanted a Gaussian distribution, we could try using a Galton board (or rather, a Galton pyramid to get a 3D shape). In any case, more research is needed into this fascinating subject, which I will perform next time I’m cooking with Gauss.