Alt text: If you ask a topologist what their house is like they start counting windows, doors, and chimneys.
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
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Hmm. Your comment gave me something to think about. Now I've thought about it and done some research... I still think the comic is right, because it specifies a 4-holed sphere.
Here's my thinking:
A sphere with two holes can be stretched into the shape of a drinking straw (or a donut, or a coffee cup). That same shape can be stretched into a disc with a single hole: one hole in the sphere becomes the outer boundary of the disc.
Likewise, a disc with three holes has the same topology as a sphere with four holes. (Or a dress, or a T-shirt.)
So yeah, you can say that a straw has one hole and a dress has three ... but only when you're counting holes in a disc.
This page shows the sphere/disc thing visually, and uses clothes as examples:
https://seattlemathmuseum.org/math-in-real-life/clothes-holes
Good point, I was missing the sphere aspect. In fairness, that undermines the joke as then the number of holes is the more common intuitive answer instead of something a topologist would come up with.