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Modes of Transportation

Title text: My bold criticism might anger the hot air balloon people, which would be a real concern if any of them lived along a very narrow line directly upwind of me.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a Transportationally convenient but insidiously dangerous robotic car - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.

Randall's chart compares different modes of transportation of convenience and danger. At the top (high in convenience and low in danger) are cars and trains, as these are both fast moving but heavy vecheles that many millions of dollars have been spent to make them safer. Motorcycles are at the same convenience level however are rated much more dangerous as careless drivers (of cars) can easily hit a motorcycle and cause extreme harm. Much lower on the convenient scale are things like unicylces and skis, which both aren't very fast or easy way's to travel and are relitivly easy to fall on. However, rated least on convenience and highest on danger is the hot air ballon.

Because a hot air ballon is rated so poorly, if an optimization algorithm considers it the optimal mode of transportation, it must be the result of a sign error (e.g. having a minus sign where a plus sign is supposed to be, or vice versa), giving the opposite result by mistake. Presumably, modes of transportation similar to hot air balloons (like zeppelins and blimps) are left off of the chart to increase the gap for comedic effect. This comic is the second comic in a row to feature an algorithm.

The title text makes a joke that if an angry hot air balloon enthusiast disagrees with the ranking, they will have a difficult time getting to Randall's house with their preferred mode of transportation. In reality, hot air balloons have some freedom to choose their direction of travel, since by controlling their altitude they can access different wind directions at different heights. Randall should, therefore, be concerned about hot air balloonists who live within a wedge spanned by the various wind directions accessible on a given day. In principle, if the weather conditions are favorable, this could cover every direction from Randall's house. The phrase "hot air balloon people" is reminiscent of "autogyro people" from the title text of 1972: Autogyros.

Curiously, the comic includes most common forms of transport, and a number of less common ones, but omits examples such as buses (a mass transit solution arguably more convenient than trains). It is not clear if this is an error, or a deliberate choice to maintain the comic's layout and presentation.

Transportation	Description	Convenience	Danger	Zone
Trains	Mass transit on rails Very convenient if scheduled services along established routes are well suited for your journey. Many people can make journeys in complete safely on dedicated tracks (Incidents can effect many people at once, but are comparatively rare.)			Practicality
Airliners	Mass transit aircraft As long as there are convenient airports, and operators. Air travel is very safe, accounting for the number of miles traveled and passengers carried. (Accidents can be catastrophic both to the passengers/crew and potentially anybody on the ground, however.)			Practicality
Cars	Motorised road vehicle Most common method of long distance travel used to get anywhere from a mile to 200 miles. It is mostly safe since it is the most common form of travel, quite a lot of time and money is spend to make it safer that safer.			Practicality
Scooters	Either: Kick scooter - ... Engine-powered scooter - ... Low powered motorbike/moped - ...			Practicality
Bicycles	Human-powered (or mostly so) two-wheeled road vehicle ...			Practicality
Boats	Watercraft of various types ...			Practicality
Walking	Personal bipedal ambulation			Practicality
Motorcycles	...			Speciality/Recreational
Helicopters	...			Speciality/Recreational
Light aircraft	...			Speciality/Recreational
Go-karts	...			Speciality/Recreational
Skateboards	...			Speciality/Recreational
Rollerblades	...			Speciality/Recreational
Skis	...			Speciality/Recreational
Unicycles	...			Speciality/Recreational
Sleds	...			Speciality/Recreational
Bumper Cars	...			Speciality/Recreational
Hot Air Balloons	...			?????

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[A chart is shown, where the Y axis is labeled "Convenient for travel" and has an arrow pointing up and the X axis is labeled "Dangerous" and has an arrow pointing right.]

[The following modes are shown in the "Zone of practicality" (a large irregular area fitting in to the top left corner of the chart), highlighted with a gray background, starting with the first few bunched at highest convenience, :]

Trains [very convenient, very safe]

Airliners

Cars

Scooters [the most dangerous of this set, at medium-low danger]

Bicycles

Boats [medium-high convenience, a slight amount of danger]

Walking [the least convienient, at roughly half, and lowest danger of this set]

[The following modes are shown in the "Zone of specialty and recreational vehicles" (a large irregular swathe from the top right to the bottom left, not quite touching the prior zone), highlighted with a gray background, the nodes spread in rough order from high convenience/danger to low convenience/danger:]

Motorcycles [highly convenient, nearly maximum danger]

Helicopters [not quite fully convenient, most danger]

Light aircraft

Go karts

Skateboards

Rollerblades

Skis

Unicycles

Sleds

Bumper cars [lowest convenience and lowest danger item]

[The following is labeled "?????" (in the bottom right corner), and has a gray background all to itself in a small blob notably distant from the nearest other group:]

Hot air balloons [placed as almost the least convenient and most dangerous, of all labels]

[Caption below the panel:]

Hot air balloons are the optimal mode of transportation, if your optimization algorithm has a sign error.

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