One winter night during one of the many German air raids on Moscow in World War II, a distinguished Soviet Professor of statistics showed up in his local air raid shelter. He had never appeared there before. "There are seven million people in Moscow," he used to say. "Why should I expect the bombs to hit me?" His friends were astonished to see him and asked what had happened to change his mind. "Look," he explained, "there are seven million people in Moscow and one elephant. Last night they got the elephant."
Mathematicians hunt elephants by going to Africa, throwing out everything that is not an elephant, and catching one of whatever is left. Experienced mathematicians will attempt to prove the existence of at least one unique elephant before proceeding to step one as a subordinate exercise.
Professors of mathematics will prove the existence of at least one unique elephant and then leave the detection and capture of an actual elephant as an exercise for their graduate students.
Computer Scientists hunt elephants by exercising an algorithm:
Experienced Computer Programmers modify the algorithm by placing a known elephant in Cairo to ensure that the algorithm will terminate. Assembly language programmers prefer to execute the algorithm on their hands and knees.
Engineers hunt elephants by going to Africa, catching gray animals at random, and stopping when any one of them weighs within plus or minus 15 percent of any previously observed elephant.
Economists don't hunt elephants, but believe that if you pay elephants enough, they will 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 you can hire them by the hour to advise those people who do. Operations research consultants can also measure the correlation of hat size and bullet color 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 do follow the herds around arguing about who owns the droppings.
Software lawyers will claim that they own an entire herd based on the look and feel of one dropping.
Vice Presidents of engineering, research, and development 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 they completely prehunt all possible elephants before the vice president sees them. If the vice president does see a non-prehunted elephant, the staff will 1) compliment the vice president's keen eyesight and 2) enlarge itself to prevent any recurrence.
Senior Managers set broad elephant hunting policy based on the assumption that elephants are just like field mice, but with deeper voices.
Quality Assurance inspectors ignore the elephants and look for mistakes the other hunters made when they packed the jeep.
Salespeople don't hunt elephants but spend their time selling elephants they haven't caught for delivery two days before the season opens.
Software salespeople ship the first thing they catch and write up an invoice for an elephant.
Hardware salespeople catch rabbits, paint them gray, and sell them as desktop elephants.