I started a discussion on Twitter this evening about consulting company names. Here are some of the names.
- Turing Machine Computing: If we can’t do it, it can’t be done.
- Heisenberg Consulting: You can have speed or quality, but not both at the same time.
- Perelman Consulting: Please don’t pay us. We don’t want your money.
- Gödel Systems: Your job is done but we can’t prove it.
- Gödel Consulting: because no one is supplying ALL your needs.
- Lebesgue Consulting: We’ve got your measure.
- Noether Consulting: We find the conserved values of your system.
- Fourier consulting: We transform your world periodically.
- Zorn’s Consulting: Your choice is axiomatic.
- Spherical Computing: Without parallel.
- Markov Chain Consulting: It doesn’t matter how we got here.
- Dirac Consulting: We get right to the point.
- Shannon Consulting: We’ll find a way to deliver your message.
- Neyman & Pearson Consulting: No one is more powerful than us.
- Complex Conjugate Consulting: We make your product real.
- Hadamard Consulting: Real solutions by complex methods.
- Zeno Consulting: We’ll get you arbitrarily close to where you want to be.
- Hilbert Consulting: You think you have a problem?
- Riemann Hypothesis Consulting: When your job is on the line and everything is critical
Here are footnotes explaining the puns above.
- Turing: In computer science, Turing machines define the limits of what is computable.
- Heisenberg: The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says that there is a limit to how well you can know a particle’s momentum and position. The more accurately you know one, the less you know about the other.
- Perelman: Turned down prize money from the Fields Institute and Clay Institute after solving the Poincaré conjecture.
- Gödel: His incompleteness theorem says that number theory contains true theorems that cannot be proved.
- Lebesgue: Founder of measure theory, a rigorous theory of length, area, volume, etc.
- Noether: Established a deep connection between symmetry and conservation laws.
- Fourier: Known for Fourier transforms and Fourier series, expressing functions as sums or integrals of periodic functions.
- Zorn: Known for Zorn’s lemma, equivalent to the axiom of choice.
- Spherical: There are no parallel lines in spherical geometry.
- Markov Chain: The probability distribution for the next move in a Markov chain depends only on the current state and not on previous history.
- Complex Conjugate: A complex number times its conjugate is a real number. See xkcd.
- Dirac: The reference here is to the Dirac delta function. Informally, a point mass. Formally, a distribution.
- Shannon: Founder of communication theory.
- Neyman-Pearson: The Neyman-Pearson lemma concerns most powerful hypothesis tests.
- Hadamard: Said “The shortest path between two truths in the real domain passes through the complex domain.” That is, techniques from complex analysis are often the easiest way to approach problems from real analysis.
- Zeno: Zeno’s paradox says you cannot get anywhere because first you have to get halfway there, then halfway again, etc.
- Hilbert: Created a famous list of 23 research problems in math in 1900.
- Riemann: The Riemann hypothesis says that all the non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function line on the critical line Re(z) = 1/2.
That was awesome, I ROLFCOPTER with the Markov one. :)
Hey, pretty good! I think the Noether one is the weakest. How about “We maximize your ideals!” from her work in algebra.
And poor Paul “known for the delta function” Dirac! Kind of like Isaac “known for his namesake cookie” Newton.
Very funny!
Note Zeno typo: can’t, not can.
It warms my heart to see that geekdom is alive and well.
> Heisenberg Consulting: You can have speed or quality, but not both at the same time.
How about: ‘speed xor quality’.
I fixed the typo in Zeno’s description and clarified the description of Dirac. He certainly did bigger things than give his name to the delta function.
Awesome! I laughed a lot with “Markov Chain”!
You forgot Banach Consulting: “Contracting around around a fixed point”
xDD
As a designer, doing logos for these will be quite the interesting task.
Some additions to the list above:
– Feynman Consulting: We Drum Up The Answers.™
(Feynman was an avid drummer and he was constantly in the search for answers to interesting problems)
– Einstein Consulting: Energize Your Business.™
(Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence. Convert passive workforce (mass) to active output (energy)).
– Newton Consulting: Gravitate To A Better Future.™
(Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation)
– Bohr Consulting: Run Circles Around Your Competition.™
(Bohr described circular orbits for electrons in his model of the atom)
And one more that deviates from the “Scientist name” template…
– Duality Consulting: The Problem Is Also The Solution.™
(Wave-Particle duality)
Sequential Computing: Our algorithms are unparallelled.
Von Neumann architectural consultants (“Still the standard”).
Bishop Berkeley acoustic dampening (“You won’t even be sure if it made a sound”).
In Sweden we have a state investment company called “Fouriertransform”
http://www.fouriertransform.se/
Erdos consulting: we’ve got your number.
This made my day.
Artin’s TV Production Agency:
Artin’s assist all stages of your TV career- ascend to an Emmy,
descend by aN oether (sic) method.
I’m loving these!
Jackknife Consulting: Don’t be the one left out.
Gibbs Consulting: want to see samples of our work?
Awesome geek humor. I’ll try a couple…
Euler Excursions: Making sure you see ALL the sights.
Hotelling Consultants: Making your product unique, just like everyone else’s.
Hermite Online Dating: It only takes one kiss.
Hamming Consultants: Spanning the range of business, one change at a time.
Oops, I’m insufficiently geeky — that last one should be Gray Solutions. I got Hamming codes and Gray codes mixed up.
Footnotes:
Euler tours visit all of the edges in a graph.
Hotelling’s Rule describes how firms simultaneously attempt to make their products similar to others (to draw away customers) and different from others (to prevent having them drawn away by similar products).
Hermite (or ‘osculatory’) interpolation draws a polynomial through a set of points that ‘kisses’ each point as a point of tangency.
Gray codes are a binary coding of the integers such that successive integers differ by only one bit.
The next step is to design a logo.
I wonder what it’d look like for Markov Chain Consulting.
Backus Computing: We make all your programming functional.
Evgeni: I gave it a shot
Evgeni: Oops, missed a word in that one. Here’s the correct version.
Einstein Fitness Club -> Your mass is our energy.
I’d hate to put a downer on all this mirth but ‘Keynes Consulting’ “when people are mathematically illiterate we make the government the stabilising buyer of math[s]” …the best of luck in your freelance ‘Endeavour.’
After COsolving Poincare conjecture. That’s actually Perelman’s reason for not accepting the prize: he doesn’t think his contribution to the solution was the largest.
Grothendieck Consulting. Abstracting business until it is trivial.
Harish Chandra Consulting. We build by example.
Sophus Lie Consulting. Advice from A to E.
Hausdorff, Uryson, Hausdorff and Hausdorff. Separating you from the competition.
Cauchy Consulting. Cauchy fan tutte.
Kac Moody Consulting: Breaks through finite dimensions.
Riesz-Fisher engineering. Monster projects.
Postnikov Consultancy. The power to tower.
Kolmogorov Consultancy. Probably today, almost surely tomorrow.
Mark Kac Acoustics. We hear you.
Poincaré & de Rham Consulting. On site Analysis.
John von Neumann Consulting. XXX CLASSIFIED XXXX
Cohen & Macaulay engineering. The sockle to build on.
Brouwer construction. When alternatives are unproven.
Korteweg & de Vries Media trainers. We teach you to make waves that last forever.
The Borel Group Consultancy. We solve to the max.
Banach & Tarski capital management. Please inform for our offshore growth opportunities.