Simple
Actually, I think if all higher math professors had to write for the Simple English Wikipedia for a year, we'd be in much better shape academically.
Actually, I think if all higher math professors had to write for the Simple English Wikipedia for a year, we'd be in much better shape academically.
There are three Cueballs discussing a particle accelerator. One Cueball asks the others about the "tertiary Free-electron laser (F.E.L) guidance system". As this is a fairly technical topic, we would expect a response filled with scientific jargon. The joke is that the other Cueball instead responds in a much simpler manner. He uses simple phrases such as "smash the right tiny things together" and "that would be very bad".
As the caption below the comic notes, Cueball (probably Randall) has spent the previous night reading the Simple English Wikipedia, a simplified version of Wikipedia intended to be easier to understand, and now he finds himself using similarly simple syntax. For example, the article for a particle accelerator describes it as "a machine that makes really tiny things called particles travel at very high speeds." This is similar to the simple response given by the responding Cueball. In the actual comic, Cueball was able to effectively communicate the dangers of using a broken F.E.L. using simple syntax similar to the style of the Simple English Wikipedia.
From the title text, Randall believes that if people teaching advanced mathematics followed this style, their subject would be more accessible. The implication is that more people would be drawn to studying mathematics and that (naturally) the world would be a better place because of this, ironically most likely true!
This concept was later revisited in 722: Computer Problems, 1133: Up Goer Five, Thing Explainer (probably most notably), 1322: Winter, 1436: Orb Hammer, 2163: Chernobyl, and 2809: Moon.