Diagram For Heartbreak

I love mak­ing these lit­tle dia­grams. It’s so cathar­tic. I remem­ber read­ing this xkcd com­ic (Do you know the func­tions? Answers in the foot­note1.) a long time ago, and think­ing, “Yeah, I don’t get it either”.

Diagram for heartbreak: Why won't you let me get over you?

Diagram for Heartbreak: Why won't you let me get over you?

Diagram for Heartbreak: Might as well not even try

Diagram for Heartbreak: Maybe I should be an asshole

Diagram for Heartbreak: Kissing ratios?

Diagram for Heartbreak: Lose-lose situation

I’ve always been a visu­al per­son, but I nev­er real­ized that doing some­thing like this would make things so much clear­er. All those years earn­ing a degree in com­put­er sci­ence — learn­ing Venn dia­grams, flow charts, and the like — have final­ly come in handy.

  1. From left to right, top to bot­tom: square root of love, cosine of love (trigonom­e­try), deriv­a­tive of love (cal­cu­lus), matrix mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of love (lin­ear alge­bra), and some­one help me out with the last one, it seems like anoth­er cal­cu­lus equa­tion with some con­stants thrown in the Fourier trans­for­ma­tion of love (Hat tip to Edd Sowden for this one). []

22 comments

  1. These are beau­ti­ful dia­grams, great job! “Maybe I Should Be An Asshole” one made me laugh — it’s too true… I (and I’m sure many oth­ers) would enjoy see­ing more of these.

    • As much as I enjoyed mak­ing these, I can’t think of any more. They pret­ty much sum up the end of the rela­tion­ship. The cyn­i­cal parts that it’s left me with, at least.

      I sup­pose I could write about the good parts in the begin­ning, but I don’t feel the same need to express that. Probably because I’ve writ­ten plen­ty about them already.

  2. The last equa­tion on the XKCD is a Fourier Transform of love.

    • Ah! I remem­ber learn­ing Fourier trans­for­ma­tions in my net­work­ing course in uni­ver­si­ty. Which I failed, the first time around. I can’t believe you rec­og­nized it! You must be a schol­ar, or use it on a dai­ly basis, or both.

  3. Those are mar­velous! The 1st, 4th or last one is my favorite.

    • I think the last one is my favourite too. I just love how all the box­es are even­ly spaced and line up with each oth­er. It was prob­a­bly the most chal­leng­ing one to make.

  4. You should real­ly find oth­er venues to pub­lish these on, very fun­ny in such an impec­ca­bly for­mal pre­sen­ta­tion.
    \
    If Only I had­n’t seen what spurred them I’d be laugh­ing.

    • Oh, one has to laugh. By anoth­er venue, do you mean see­ing one of these dia­grams on a t‑shirt or a mug? Cause some­one else has e‑mailed me and expressed enthu­si­asm about this, and I may con­sid­er doing it if there’s enough inter­est.

      • Yes, some­thing like that. I think once a long time ago I saw some­one on Craigslist make a very fun­ny “You should date me because” series of dia­grams and it was a big hit-
        I think he made the “Best Of” list.

  5. These were so much fun. Very very neat.

    • Neat is good. I tried to make them as sim­ple and as strik­ing as pos­si­ble.

  6. I loved these haha! Made my some­what shit­ty day seem okay in the end :) thank you!

    • You’re wel­come. :) I guess the ideas are uni­ver­sal enough for many to relate.

  7. This is pret­ty good. It’s sad that I: A) under­stand all the flow charts per­fect­ly. B) Feel the same way.

    I hope you’re ready to get slammed because of digg.

    Also, keep post­ing them!

    • I’m hop­ing for more dig­gs. Only 4 so far, and this deserves far more.

    • I’ve enabled caching, though my host should be able to han­dle it; I got slash­dot­ted once too, and the serv­er did­n’t go down!

    • I was­n’t sure about that one, because it’s writ­ten from her per­spec­tive, so it’s not com­plete­ly con­sis­tent with the rest of them. But I think the idea comes across clear­ly.

  8. What hap­pened to the Digg but­ton?

    • I’m still fid­dling with the imple­men­ta­tion on sin­gle posts.

  9. This is very, very sad… but it’s also very beau­ti­ful in a way.

    You could make a won­der­ful book of things like this.

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