Meme Explanation: This meme captures the common calculus struggle: seeing a complex, jagged function that clearly isn’t differentiable but getting stuck when trying to prove it.
Differentiability means a function is smooth without sharp breaks or corners, but functions like the one shown have infinite sharp points, making formal proofs tough.
The intense, conflicted expression of Wood Harris’s character Ace perfectly expresses that math frustration — you know the function isn’t differentiable, but the rigorous proof feels just out of reach.
This resonates with anyone tackling advanced math challenges and the frustrating gap between intuition and formal proof.
differentiable at a point if it has a well-defined tangent there—that is, if you can calculate its derivative smoothly without any sudden jumps or sharp corners. Many functions are differentiable almost everywhere, meaning you can easily find their slope at most points.
However, some functions, despite being continuous (you can draw them without lifting your pen), have infinitely many sharp corners or “kinks.” These points make the function non-differentiable at those locations.
One classic example is the Weierstrass function—a continuous function that is nowhere differentiable. Visualizing these jagged graphs helps us intuitively know they aren’t differentiable, but proving this rigorously requires advanced math tools and understanding.
The meme’s text says:
“When you know [a specific, complex, jagged graph] isn’t differentiable but you can’t prove it.”
This perfectly sums up the frustration many students feel. The graph visually screams “non-differentiable,” but writing the formal proof to confirm this is often challenging and sometimes intimidating.
It’s that moment when you know the answer deep down, but the strict mathematical language and definitions seem elusive.
Wood Harris’s intense, almost conflicted expression adds humor to the meme by personifying this struggle: the mix of confidence in intuition with the helplessness of formal proof.
It reflects a universal academic experience—understanding concepts on a gut level but wrestling with the complexity of proving them on paper.
In summary, the meme is a funny and relatable portrayal of a tough math hurdle, making light of the very human feeling of being caught between knowing something intuitively and grappling with the rigor of formal mathematics.
