881: Probability
explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 20:40, 30 November 2012 by 131.107.0.114 (Talk)
| Probability |
 Title text: My normal approach is useless here, too. |
Explanation
As the title text says, my normal approach is useless here.
Cueball and Megan are sitting on a hospital bed reading a piece of paper, with the statistics for breast cancer survival. It looks like Megan has just been diagnosed with breast cancer.
The dotted line represents the survival rate distribution: the higher number being centered on about 5 years, in this case with a chance of 81%. 10 years is the limit: the max survival rate expected is 10 years, with a chance of 77%.
Randall posted this blog post two months after posting this strip explaining the cancer strips.
Transcript
- [A plot of years vs. percent, with a solid and a dashed line. The solid line starts at 100%, and drops constantly. The dashed line starts around 85%, rises to 95% after 5 years, then drops.]
- [A simple table.]
- 5 years 81%
- 10 years 77%
- [Two people are sitting on a bench, next to an IV drip hanging from a rack. One is holding a paper.]
- Cueball: You know, probability used to be my favorite branch of math
- Cueball: Because it had so many real-life applications.
- [They embrace, faces together.]
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