718: The Flake Equation

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The Flake Equation
Statistics suggest that there should be tons of alien encounter stories, and in practice there are tons of alien encounter stories. This is known as Fermi's Lack-of-a-Paradox.
Title text: Statistics suggest that there should be tons of alien encounter stories, and in practice there are tons of alien encounter stories. This is known as Fermi's Lack-of-a-Paradox.

Explanation

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The Flake equation is a parody of the Drake equation, which estimates the number of detectable extraterrestrial civilizations in the galaxy.

The title text refers to Fermi's Lack-of-a-Paradox as a parody of the Fermi paradox: the contradiction between the high estimated probability of extraterrestrial civilization and humanity's lack of evidence for such civilizations.

Another comic parodying this equation is 384: The Drake Equation.

Transcript

The Flake Equation:

P = WP × (CR + MI) × TK × F0 × F1 × DT × AU ≈ 100,000

Where:

WP = World Population (7,000,000)
CR = Fraction of people who imagine an alien encounter because they're crazy or want to feel special (1/10,000)
MI = Fraction of people who misinterpret a physical or physiological experience as an alien sighting (1/10,000)
TK = Probability that they'll tell someone (1/10)
F0 = Average number of people they tell
F1 = Average number of people each friend tells this "firsthand" account
DT = Probability that any details not fitting the narrative will be revised or forgotten in retelling (9/10)
AU = Fraction of people with the means and motivation to share the story with a wider audience (blogs, forums, reporters)

Caption: Even with conservative guesses for the values of the variables, this suggests there must be a huge number of credible-sounding alien sightings out there, available to anyone who wants to believe!


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Discussion

Anybody notice that the real product of the numbers he gives is 6.3 (10), not 100,000? 02:32, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

No, it's not - you've multiplied Cr and Mx when you should have added them. The real product is 126,000 = 100,000. 162.158.69.51

There was a later comic about our capabilities' precluding of UFO sightings and such. I may find it at some point. --Quicksilver (talk) 02:51, 20 August 2013 (UTC)


Settled

googlesearch=site:explainxkcd.com ufo

http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1235:_Settled

Kevin McCready (talk) 13:25, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Is there any significance to the word "flake"? Urban Dictionary says it stands for "unreliable person", but certainly not in context of alien sightings. --162.158.90.217 13:34, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

 It's a portmanteau of "Drake" and "Fake". --172.68.10.94 10:58, 4 February 2017 (UTC)
It's not actually a portmanteau, more like a play on words :) -- The Cat Lady (talk) 13:57, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

The transcript looks pretty complete to me? Why is it tagged incomplete? Mushrooms (talk) 07:50, 22 March 2022 (UTC)