explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2882: Net Rotations

2024-01-18T13:05:43Z

108.162.238.82:

Wait, so I'm not the only one who thinks about this? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.167.177|172.71.167.177]] 23:28, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Second! Still, I'm surprised that there are no edits yet. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.210.160|172.70.210.160]] 23:58, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

This sounds like the premise of the 1966 sci-fi story The Revolving Boy by Gertrude Friedberg. I recall reading it sometime in the 1960s or ’70s. I wonder whether Randall has read the book too — https://solarbridge.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/the-revolving-boy-gertrude-friedberg/
I'm drawing a blank. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.68|162.158.158.68]] 01:05, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I feel like the "worldline torsion" line needs to be explained moreso than the OCD thing, since "worldline" is a word people might not know and it's the crux of the joke. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.50|162.158.62.50]] 02:47, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

:A worldline is a relativistic concept, the track of a particle (or anything, by extension) through 4D spacetime. Randall is imagining it as a physical object (not a mathematical abstraction) and thus whenever the actual object rotates, its worldline is twisted. Presumably these physical worldlines would build up torsional potential energy as they twisted, and could eventually be damaged if too many twists/year were present.[[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 02:57, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
:: Yeah - something like that needs to go in the explanation.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.47|172.70.85.47]] 09:44, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I would love to know what my net rotations is. Not enough to actually keep track, mind you. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.178.126|172.70.178.126]] 02:53, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
:I had a season pass to an amusement park a few years ago, and the time I spent on the Scrambler would probably make mine quite difficult to calculate, even if I knew how many times I rode it. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.247.57|172.69.247.57]] 04:41, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
: Probably depends a lot on whether you suffer from Zoolander's Syndrome. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.62|172.70.91.62]] 09:48, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

isn't this a refernce to spacetime torsion and the einstien-cartan theory? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Cartan_theory

When I used to do plasma donations (they draw blood, centrifuge it, extract the plasma/platelet fraction and return the red and white cells) I would, when telling someone about it, jokingly say that the only side effect was, then I would jump and spin. [[User:RIIW - Ponder it|RIIW - Ponder it]] ([[User talk:RIIW - Ponder it|talk]]) 08:17, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

This comic makes sense in 2D because the space of rotations has fundamental group ℤ, but in 3D wouldn't you have at most ℤ/2ℤ corrections to make, since SU(2) double-covers SO(3)? cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_trick [[User:Ncf|Ncf]] ([[User talk:Ncf|talk]]) 09:27, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Is it worth mentioning the real medical conditions of torsion, e. . a torsion fracture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torsion_fracture)? [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 12:43, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Remember that, to do it properly, any turns made in your car also have to be reversed in your car, to account for the rotation of the car's atoms. Go do a full loop through a counterclockwise cloverleaf! (Finding one is left as an exercise to the reader.) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.82|108.162.238.82]] 13:05, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Talk:2510: Modern Tools

2021-09-03T16:10:10Z

108.162.238.82: Question about configure/Make

Note that this is the second time Randall tried to tell bash and zsh apart. (First time was in [[1678]].) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.83|162.158.88.83]] 05:44, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
:Great memory. Has added it to this first attempt at an explanation. Do not know enough about these files, environment etc. so I hope someone will improve. Rare I come here and there is nothing added to the explanation yet. Only your coment showed me I was not here first. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 06:48, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
You can generate makefiles today with a number of causal language models. I wonder what other approaches there are. [[User:Baffo32|Baffo32]] ([[User talk:Baffo32|talk]]) 10:02, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Is randall literally just making jokes for himself and nobody else at this point? Even if someone knows what this all means, I doubt it many of them find it funny. - [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.125|172.70.130.125]] 10:09, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
: How does the joke land with you? I tell jokes like Randall's a lot to process how my life was destroyed by AI, and I found the comic as funny as I find my own jokes, but big and public. It seems nice that people are learning about and talking about these things. [[User:Baffo32|Baffo32]] ([[User talk:Baffo32|talk]]) 10:12, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
: @172.70.130.125: YMMV. I can say that I find it funny. Certainly amusing, and thought-provoking. And then after a few moments contemplating... *POW*. ...the idea of actually doing this also starts to appeal to me (as a pipe-dream, perhaps). But I am just a single datum-point, and you are another. Maybe neither of us are entirely representative of the usual audience.
: And, even if nobody found it funny, except Randall, he can post anything he wants (within ethical and legal bounds, etc), even if it's just AI-autogenerated rubbish. And then you can stop reading if your own fun-maximiser function decides it would be more beneficial to its goals. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.73|162.158.159.73]] 10:44, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
: For myself and other Software Enginnering/System Administrator friends, we all think it's very funny. Randall is not expected to make his comics accessible to all audiences, and when he targets an audience it can be reasonably assumed that that specific demographic will like the content.

Modern tools… require modern problem? [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 10:33, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

The best part is that pretty much this have actually happened in real world: https://thedailywtf.com/articles/No%2C_We_Need_a_Neural_Network. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.10.205|172.68.10.205]] 10:46, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
:Marvellous! "The pig go", indeed! That was 2006? {{w|Darwinian Poetry}} was in 2003, it would have been nice to have linked the two, somehow, while having a handy idle supercluster going spare... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.93|141.101.98.93]] 11:42, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

I believe part of the humor is that creating a Python (development) environment from scratch can literally be typing two or three commands on a command line, or clicking on a few links for the mouse-dependent. Building and training an AI to repair one specific Python environment is overkill, like buying a car to get from one room to another of a building. One selling point of Python is how simple it is to set up and work in. [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 10:54, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
:I usually install most optional dependencies that my package manager suggests. I bet I already have a Python IDE lying around somewhere without knowing it. Well, I have Intellij Idea, I bet that could be used for Python as well, with a plugin if needed. I definitely know that I once got a working Qt IDE at one point without intending to. [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 11:13, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Does anyone else think that this was prompted by the recent announcement of {{w|Github Copilot}}? [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 14:20, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

----
Non-comic note (that I'm not sure would help to add to prior Community Portal reports as it never seemed to get noticed when I did it before): I'm getting Cloudflare errors (520: fully blaming the site host) and even 'plain text' site error responses (503? ...may not be) a number of times while interacting with this page, today. Also had a "failed to contact CAPTCHA" on the first attempt to submit one edit, though that ''must'' be a different glitch so probably coincidental (my own link jittering wouldn't give me Cloudfare/server-responses as above) and Not Your Problem™. I don't know if others are getting this, but the last time I had such a flurry of momentary/refresh-overcomable errors was shortly before explainxkcd went ''completely'' off-air (month or two ago? No, longer than that...) - perhaps no similarity, just saying. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.146|162.158.158.146]] 11:18, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
:Error 520 Ray ID: 68880cdaadb0072a • 2021-09-02 16:17:44 UTC / Web server is returning an unknown error (<= Cloudflare) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.247|141.101.98.247]] 16:21, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
For the python environment, couldn't he just be talking about python virtual environments? What you normally do if you have a broken python virtual environment is to delete it and recreate it, so deleting itself would be a normal thing to do in this case. Recreating an environment is normally done in seconds, so finding out what was wrong normally isn't worth the time.

Is it possible that the title text may also be a subtle reference to the Ouroboros (the snake eating itself)?
While not an exact comparison, there seem to be parallels between a snake devouring its own tail, and a python AI deleting it's own code.

"the agent finds a way to disable itself as more efficient to meet its reward parameters" is this actually a thing? If true, really interesting and an example should be included, but I can't find anything to back it up. ''Please sign your comments.''

I think the Tester for the Makefile generator would just be checking the Makefile exists and make can execute it. The status of the make execution gets passed to the generator for it to get better at generating Makefiles. [[User:Nutster|Nutster]] ([[User talk:Nutster|talk]]) 02:01, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
:It might take some metric as to how much/little broken the (initially garbage?) early productions are... One would be the first line number mentioned as an error, or the ratio of info vs error text displayed. Getting to the stage of ''mostly'' valid outputs means it has developed an output phase-space that has started to maxmin these kind of values in just the right way. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.134.65|172.70.134.65]] 03:30, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

Call me crazy, but... isn't there a tool that creates mostly valid Makefiles, and it is called configure? And thus he is using very new technology to accomplish the same task that we previously could? I thought that was a good chunk of that part of the joke... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.82|108.162.238.82]] 16:10, 3 September 2021 (UTC)

1752: Interplanetary Experience

2016-10-31T18:36:10Z

108.162.238.82: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1752
| date = October 28, 2016
| title = Interplanetary Experience
| image = interplanetary_experience.png
| titletext = But instead of hitting the ocean, you should land in an overheating hot tub on a sinking cruise ship, sending it crashing through the floor into the burning engine room as the ship goes under.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|More details?}}
This comic lists ten {{w|celestial bodies}}: all the other seven {{w|planets}} (than {{w|Earth}}), the {{w|dwarf planet|(dwarf) planet}} {{w|Pluto}} and two {{w|moons}}, the Earth's {{w|Moon}} and {{w|Titan (moon)|Titan}}, the largest moon of {{w|Saturn}}. It then asks what places on Earth people could go to for a real '''Interplanetary Experience''', as if they were explorers on these planets. It turns out that none of these ten other worlds are very nice to visit...

This is a parody on organizations that in preparation for future planetary exploration organize half-realistic experiments in human behavior on other planets, trying to emulate or mock-up - often on low budget - the conditions in which future explorers are to live and work. For this purpose, they build mock-up bases, habitats etc. in places that ''look like'' other planets or have the environmental conditions ''somewhat'' similar to other celestial bodies' surfaces. They seek out desolate places like deserts or polar regions for this purpose.

In this comic [[Randall]] tries to identify places on Earth that ''actually'' have environmental conditions as close to these other worlds' as can be possible on the surface of the Earth. Some of the places suggested by Randall are borderline-survivable for a human, but most will kill you extremely quickly without a lot of high-tech gear - whether through {{w|hypothermia#severe|severe hypothermia}}, {{w|conflagration}} (large fire), crushing, or whiplash from violent winds.

Basically, nowhere in the {{w|solar system}} except Earth is even close to survivable. There is no planet or moon with a breathable atmosphere, or where the temperature stays within the human -tolerable range of roughly −20°C to 40°C (−5°F to 105°F, 250-310 K). The only place humans have so far ventured off-world is the Moon, and only during lunar morning while wearing thick pressurized spacesuits. Some celestial bodies, like {{w|Venus}} and {{w|Jupiter}}, may ''never'' be visitable by humans without either huge advances in {{w|material science}} or full-scale {{w|terraforming}}. Some places, like the centers of any planet (for example, the {{w|gas giants}} or even Earth itself), will probably never be visited, even by robots. (The title text suggests what happens when falling towards the center of a gas giant).

Below is a [[#Table of celestial bodies|table]] going through the seven suggested places on Earth. Due to the low pressure and temperature on the top of {{w|Mount Everest}} it is mentioned no less than three times, but using different time of day to represent different celestial bodies. In the first entry it even takes care of three in one go. Two of those are the Moon and Mercury, but for both only on their night side facing away from the sun. They are thus each mentioned twice, as there is a huge difference in environmental conditions between the sunlit faces of these two and their night sides. On the other end of the temperature scale are mentions of {{w|lava}} and a {{w|blast furnace}}; also high pressure environments are suggested to simulate other planets. The last goes for the gas giants, which are all mentioned together in the last entry.

The two groupings explains why there are only seven places mentioned for ten celestial bodies. The reason that the Moon is mentioned is of course that it is the closest companion to Earth and that we have actually visited. That the only other moon mentioned is likely because it is the only really cold celestial body that actually has an atmosphere as well as a surface humans could stand on. But there are many other large moons that would be interesting to visit, like the {{w|Galilean moons}} especially {{w|Europa (moon)|Europa}}. But that could probably be compared to being on Pluto, except the sun is a bit larger. That Pluto is included as the only dwarf planet is probably because it was still a planet when Randall was a kid (see [[473: Still Raw]]) and is the most recent (new) celestial body visited by a space probe at the time of release of this comic. This was celebrated by Randall in [[1551: Pluto]].

The title text is just a continuation of the last entry about falling down through the atmosphere of a gas giant, and it is also explained in the table below. This was also explored in the [[what if?]] {{what if|138|Jupiter Submarine}}.

==Table of celestial bodies==
* {{w|Pluto}}, {{w|Moon}} (night); {{w|Mercury (planet)|Mercury}} (night) — Mt. Everest at night
:: The {{w|dwarf planet}} Pluto is a small icy rock so far away from the {{w|Sun}} that it practically makes no difference if it is day or night, the Sun is just the brightest star in the sky of Pluto's "day" side. But for both the {{w|Earth|Earth's}} Moon and Mercury (the innermost and smallest {{w|planet}} of the {{w|solar system}}) it makes a huge difference, which is why there is both a day and a night experience mentioned for these two celestial bodies (see below). Although they are very much closer to the Sun than Pluto, this makes no difference during their night time (when they face away from Sun). They are both relatively small, rocky bodies with practically no atmosphere and relatively slow rotation. Therefore their surfaces not illuminated by the Sun will cool down to very low temperatures (around –170 °C, –290 °F, 100 K), making their nighttime hemispheres desolate, dark and cold places. Randall proposes the summit of {{w|Mount Everest}} (the tallest mountain on Earth) as the place that will emulate the conditions most closely. It is a rocky, desolate and cold place. Even though it is not the coldest place on Earth, it is the highest point on land, therefore it has the lowest atmospheric pressure. It cannot be compared to the near-zero pressure and 100 Kelvins conditions on the aforementioned bodies, but it is as close as you can get on Earth. The top of Mt. Everest has an air pressure just 1/3 of what it is at sea level, and the oxygen levels are so low that they are barely survivable, although a few people have [http://adventureblog.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/21/how-climbing-everest-without-oxygen-can-go-very-wrong/ reached the top without oxygen tanks], but others have died after losing their oxygen supply, making it as close as you can get on Earth to the near-vacuum found on these worlds.
* {{w|Moon}} (day) — Mt. Everest at noon under a tanning lamp
:: As explained above, Mount Everest is as good an emulation of the Moon surface at night as you can get on Earth. During the Moon's day, its surface gets about as much solar radiation as Earth at noon, because both bodies' distance from the Sun is almost the same. The Earth's atmosphere, however, stops most of the Sun's {{w|ultraviolet radiation}}. A {{w|tanning lamp}} is a device emitting mostly ultraviolet radiation for the purpose of artificial {{w|tanning}}; here it is used to augment the filtered Sun's radiation in an attempt to emulate the Moon's daytime conditions better. Since the Moon does not have any atmosphere it is hard to discuss the temperature experienced on the Moon, but still the [http://planetfacts.org/temperature-on-the-moon/ surface of the Moon reaches temperatures] above water's boiling point (100 °C or 212 °F) during the day with an average daytime temperature of the Moon at 107 °C (225 °F). This effect will not be very well emulated on top of Mount Everest or even in the hottest (non-volcanic) place on Earth's surface that reaches 53.9 °C (129 °F) — see the [[what if?]] ''{{what if|152|Flood Death Valley}}''.
* {{w|Mercury (planet)|Mercury}} (day) — A lava flow at a volcano at noon
:: Mercury's surface never quite reaches {{w|lava}} temperatures (if it did, it would be molten), but it gets close. At noon, Mercury's equator reaches 420 °C (800 °F, 700 K). Lava is a liquid usually at temperatures from 700 to 1,200 °C (1,300 to 2,200 °F, 1000 K to 1500 K) but depending on what type of rock it's formed from, [http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/archive/2003/03_04_17.html lava can erupt] at temperatures as low as 500°C–600°C (930°F–1100 °F, 770–870 K). Standing on a {{w|volcano}} on a partially solidified lava flow (which, it goes without saying, is incredibly dangerous) would expose you to similar temperatures.
:: Near the poles, Mercury's surface temperature is always very low as the axial tilt is almost zero, meaning that the poles do not get much direct sunlight and their temperature is constantly below −93 °C (−136 °F, 180 K).
* {{w|Venus}} — A heat-shrink wetsuit in a blast furnace
:: The average surface temperature on Venus is around 470 °C (870 °F, 740 K) (enough to melt {{w|lead}} at 327 °C (620 °F, 600 K), which is the {{w|Atmosphere_of_Venus#Troposphere|usual comparison}}), and the pressure is 92 bar (by comparison, pressure on earth is only about 1 bar). A {{w|blast furnace}} is a bit too hot — the blast itself is 900 to 1300 °C (1600 °F to 2300 °F, 1170 K to 1570 K), and they can reach 2000 °C — but either temperature is enough to kill you in seconds. As the blast furnace would emulate Venus' temperature but not pressure, Randall proposes that a daring volunteer wear a hypothetical heat-shrink wetsuit. A {{w|wetsuit}} is an elastic garment worn mostly over the whole body by swimmers, divers etc. {{w|Heat-shrink tubing}} is an elastic tube made of a material that shrinks when heated, used to provide extra insulation and mechanical or environmental protection in electrical and electronics work — you put a length of tubing over your wire, connector, or a joint and heat it with a hot air gun, making it shrink and crimp over your device. A hypothetical heat-shrink wetsuit worn while sitting in a blast furnace supposedly would shrink rapidly in the extreme temperature, exerting great pressure on your body, thus emulating Venus' surface atmospheric pressure. In other words, do not go to Venus!
* {{w|Mars}} — Mt. Everest at sunset
:: Again use Mount Everest's thin atmosphere and very cold temperatures to emulate the planet, but Mars' dusty, greenhouse-gas-containing atmosphere means it's not as cold as Mercury at night, nor as hot as the Moon during the day. Also the sun is much farther from Mars than from the Earth/Moon system, but much, much closer than Pluto, so it should be colder than the day side of the Moon. But the Sun still looks like a sun rather than a star from Mars, unlike on Pluto. The sunset will also make the sky reddish-purple, similar to [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PIA17944-MarsCuriosityRover-AfterCrossingDingoGapSanddune-20140209.jpg the way the Martian sky often looks].
* {{w|Titan (moon)|Titan}} — Waist-deep in an outgassing Siberian swamp
:: Titan, the largest of {{w|Saturn}} moons (and one of the largest moons in the solar system) is one of the promising worlds for life. Given that its surface temperature is –180 °C (–290 °F, 95 K), that says a lot about how inhospitable the rest of the solar system is. The chemistry of the planet is interesting — there are lots of nitrogen compounds and hydrocarbons and the atmosphere is mostly nitrogen and methane. It has been confirmed that methane lakes exist on Titan's surface. It thus follows that there is likely also some precipitation of methane "snow", similarly to how water forms lakes and falls down as sleet on Earth. Similar compounds are produced by rotting material in {{w|swamps}}, hence the comparison to a cold {{w|Siberian}} swamp. Due to the global warming large area of the {{w|tundra}} in Siberia that used to be permanently locked in {{w|permafrost}} are now heating up enough to {{w|Arctic methane emissions|release these gases}}. It might thus be possible to end up waist deep in one of these "heated" swamp areas due to the resulting {{w|outgassing}}. Sadly for the global temperature this outgassing just increases the release of greenhouse gasses, making the global warming increase even faster. This may very well be the reason Randall chooses to mention it here, as another call back to recurring theme of [[:Category:Climate change|Climate change]] and to the recent comic [[1732: Earth Temperature Timeline]]. One key difference though is that on Earth, swamps are mostly water. On Titan — if they exist at all — they're liquid methane. Siberia also has some of the most extreme temperature differences on Earth, while Titan is just consistently cold. The coldest place in Siberia is the {{w|Pole of Cold}}, the coldest point in the {{w|Northern hemisphere}} having reached –71.2 °C (–96.2 °F, 202 K). Not quite Titan levels of cold, but certainly deadly enough. But in such cold places there would be no outgassing, so on Earth it is not possible to have both the cold and the outgassing.
* {{w|Jupiter}}-{{w|Neptune}} — Jumping from a high-altitude balloon over an Antarctic Ocean winter storm
:: Note that it is Jupiter to Neptune thus including also {{w|Saturn}} and {{w|Uranus}}. They are under one called {{w|gas giants}} for a reason. All the planets are very cold and have stormy weather (Uranus is the least active, and Neptune is the most active) and extreme temperature and pressure gradients. On the edge of the atmosphere, conditions aren't much different from space, but as you fall in, the temperature and pressure rapidly increase past the freezing point (allowing clouds of ice and water). This environment is simulated by jumping out of a {{w|high-altitude balloon}} (low pressure and cold) and falling down into an {{w|Antarctic Ocean}} winter storm, a very cold and violently windy place. The storms on the gas planets can be much more violent than any storm on Earth. On Neptune the storms can reach 2,100 km/h (580 m/s, 1,300 mph), whereas the {{w|Great Red Spot}} of Jupiter only reaches 430 km/h (120 m/s, 268 mph). The {{w|Wind_speed#Highest_speed|highest wind speed}} on Earth (outside {{w|tornadoes}}) has been measured at 408 km/h (113 m/s, 253 mph), and that was only the gusts. This last entry's description of the place on Earth continues in the title text, see below.
* {{w|Jupiter}}-{{w|Neptune}} (continued from above in '''title text''') — Instead of hitting the ocean, you should land in an overheating hot tub on a sinking cruise ship, sending it crashing through the floor into the burning engine room as the ship goes under.
:: The title text continues the last entry in the main comic, so this explanation is also a direct continuation of the above entry. The extreme temperature and pressure gradients mentioned do not stop when the atmospheric temperature and pressure increase beyond water's freezing point. Soon the temperature reaches past the boiling point, and on up to thousands of degrees and unimaginably high pressures, increasing further until reaching the central core. The cores of Neptune and Uranus most likely consist of rock (superheated silicates, iron and nickel) or in the case of Saturn and Jupiter of liquid {{w|metallic hydrogen}}, where the extreme high-pressure and temperature causes {{w|hydrogen}} to behave like a metal. This is only a hypothesis, as it is not something our technology is currently able to reproduce. The suggested simulation of this environment is to fall into a super hot bath tub that falls into the burning engine room of a ship that is sinking, and thus is about be crushed by the water pressure of the deep ocean. This is the closest representation of the pressure and temperature conditions of the inner parts of the gas giants that can be imagined on Earth, but of course the cores of these planets are far, far more inhospitable than the scenarios mentioned above. Descending into Jupiter was also explored in the [[what if?]] {{what if|138|Jupiter Submarine}}.

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the panel:]
:<big>Where to go on Earth to get the Interplanetary Explorer Experience</big>

:[A chart with seven rows with celestial bodies on the left side of seven lines and a description on the right side. The first entry has three celestial bodies in two rows, the rest are in one row, although the last entry encompasses a list of planets. Four times the day/night side of the celestial bodies is mentioned in brackets.]
:{|class="wikitable"
|-
| Pluto, Moon (night)
|rowspan="2" | Mt. Everest at night
|-
| Mercury (night)
|-
| Moon (day) || Mt. Everest at noon under a tanning lamp
|-
| Mercury (day) || A lava flow on a volcano at noon
|-
| Venus || A heat-shrink wetsuit in a blast furnace
|-
| Mars || Mt. Everest at sunset
|-
| Titan || Waist-deep in an outgassing Siberian swamp
|-
| Jupiter-Neptune || Jumping from a high-altitude balloon over an Antarctic Ocean winter storm
|}

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Space]]

1572: xkcd Survey

2016-01-24T01:22:23Z

108.162.238.82: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1572
| date = September 2, 2015
| title = xkcd Survey
| image = xkcd_survey.png
| titletext = The xkcd Survey: Big Data for a Big Planet
}}
*The comic links to [http://goo.gl/forms/B5RaBeZ6nw The xkcd survey] on Google.

{{incomplete|This comic cannot be complete until Randall releases the raw and/or analysed data. The analysis needs to be mentioned here. Until then, this comic needs to be marked incomplete.}}

==Explanation==
As the comic image states, it links to a survey created with [https://www.google.com/forms/about/ Google Forms], containing a series of questions. The questions range from mundane typical survey questions such as “Do you have any food allergies?”, to rather strange, such as “Fill this text box with random letters by randomly mashing keys on your keyboard.” (See [[1530: Keyboard Mash]]).

The stated goal of the survey is to “create an interesting and unusual data set for people to play with”. A strange data set is a ripe opportunity for a sampling of readers. It's also supposed to be “a search for weird correlations” – presumably the goal is to be able to say things like “people who have been skydiving are (more/less) likely than average to dislike cilantro”. (See also [[882: Significant]] about finding presumably-spurious correlations between unrelated data.)

This explanation will undoubtedly expand when the data comes in.

{{w|Image_map#Client-side_image_map|HTML image maps}} is a technique for marking up areas of an image on a web page, such that each area can be a link without the whole image being a link. [[Randall]] could have used this type of image map to make only the “Click here to take the survey” button be a link, and none of the rest of the image. But he cannot get the hang of it (or knowing his skills, does not wish to take the time to learn it). Not getting the hang of HTML image maps was also referenced on [http://imgs.xkcd.com/store/tour-news.png the banner for his book tour] from [http://web.archive.org/web/20140901023821/http://xkcd.com/ September 2014]

The title text is a joke off of {{w|Big Data}}, which is a name for analysis of a set of data that includes a huge amount of information. He also says "for a big planet" because the Earth is big.{{Citation needed}}

The survey is closed, and the questions replaced with the text: "The xkcd survey is now closed. Thank you for all your answers! Response data is being collected and will be posted soon." As of 23 January 2016, the same caption is still there, with no indication of exactly how soon the data is intended to be posted.

==The Survey==
The Survey started off with the following statement:

<nowiki>This is an anonymous survey. After it's done, a database of everyone's responses will be posted.
There's no specific reason for any of the questions. The goal is to create an interesting and unusual data set for people to play with. This is obviously not going to be a real random sample of people, but in the interest of getting cooler data, if you're sharing this with friends, try sending it to some people who wouldn't normally see this kind of thing!

WARNING: This survey is anonymous, but your answers WILL BE MADE PUBLIC. Depending what you write, it's possible that someone may be able to identify you by looking at your responses. None of these questions should ask about anything too private, but don't write anything that you don't want people to see. If you're not comfortable answering a question, just skip it.</nowiki>

'''Note:''' The order of the possible answers (the list of possibilities) was random, and changed every time the page is reloaded. So do not try to fix the order here below...

===Plane===
*Have you ever been in a plane?
**No
**Yes

===Skydiving===
*Have you ever been {{w|Parachuting|skydiving}}?
**No, but I might someday
**Yes
**No

===The Dress===
*When you first saw {{w|The dress (viral phenomenon)|The Dress}}, what color was it? — (Also see [[1492: Dress Color]] and the [[Blag]] ENTRY [http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ Color Survey Results]).
**White and gold
**A color combination not listed here
**I don't remember
**Blue and black
**What dress?

===Popular food===
*What's a really popular food that you don't like?
**''Text box''

===Floaters===
*When you look at a blue sky, do you see those swirly {{w|floater|floaters}} in your vision?
**Yes, constantly
**I'm not sure what things you mean
**Yes, occasionally
**No

===Running out of gas===
*Have you ever had a car run out of gas while you were driving it?
**Yes
**No

===Animals===
*Name the first five animals you can think of
**''Multi line text box''

===Weather===
*What's the weather like where you are right now?
**''Text box''

===Activities===
*Which of these can you do reasonably well?
*(Check all that apply)
**{{w|slam dunk|Dunk}} a basketball — A "slam dunk" or simply "dunk" is the act of jumping up and putting the ball through the net with a lot of force
**Tie a {{w|sheet bend}} or {{w|bowline}} — A sheet bend is a knot that joins two ropes together; A bowline is a knot used to form a fixed loop at the end of a rope
**Roller skate
**[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/high-heel-race/ Run in high heels]
**Drive a stick shift — See {{w|Manual transmission}} of a car
**Solve a {{w|Rubik's cube}}
**Dive headfirst off a diving board — See {{w|Springboard}} and {{w|Diving platform}}
**Ice skate
**{{w|Skateboarding|Skateboard}}
**Walk on {{w|stilts}} — Stilts are poles, posts or pillars used to allow a person to walk at a height above the ground
**Ski
**Cut vegetables with a knife
**Swim
**Ride a horse
**{{w|Unicycle}}
**Change the oil on a car
**Do a back {{w|Handspring (gymnastics)|handspring}} — A handspring is an exercise in gymnastics in which you jump through the air landing on your hands, then again landing on your feet
**Juggle — {{w|Toss juggling}} (the most recognizable form of juggling) consists in throwing objects into the air and catching them.

===Spelling===
*What word can you never seem to spell on the first try?
**''Text box''

===Condiments===
*Do you eat {{w|condiments}} directly out of the fridge as a snack?
**No
**Yes

===Thermostat===
*When you adjust a thermostat that was set by someone else, it's usually because you want the room to be...
**Cooler
**Warmer

===Clothing===
*What color is the shirt/dress/upper-body-clothing you're wearing right now, if any?
**''Text box''

===Colds===
*Do you get {{w|Common cold|colds}} often?
**No
**Yes

===Number===
*Pick a number from 1 to 100
**''Text box''

===Spelling===
*On a scale of 1 to 10, how good at spelling are you? (Note that the question does not specify which end of the scale is good or bad.)
**''Tick off list with numbers from 1 to 10.''

===Myers-Briggs===
*Do you know your {{w|Myers–Briggs_Type_Indicator|Myers-Briggs type}}?
**No
**Yes

===Astrology===
*Do you know your {{w|astrological sign}}?
**No
**Yes

===Siblings===
*How many older siblings do you have?
**''Text box''
*How many younger siblings do you have?
**''Text box''
*How many twin/etc siblings do you have?
**''Text box''

===Sleepiness===
*Do you feel sleepy a lot?
**Yes
**No

===Movie star===
*Name a movie star
**''Text box''

===Time in sun===
*Do you spend a lot of time in the sun?
**Yes
**No

===Broccoli===
*Does {{w|broccoli}} taste bitter to you?
**Yes
**No
**I've never had it

===Wakefulness===
*Do you regularly stay awake much later than you meant to?
**Yes
**No

===Keyboard mashing===
*Fill this text box with gibberish by mashing random keyboard keys (See [[1530: Keyboard Mash]]).
**''Broad multi-line text box''

===Driving===
*On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is terrible and 3 is average, how good a driver do you think you are?
**''Tick off list with numbers from 1 to 5.''

===Allergies===
*Do you have any food allergies?
**No
**Yes

===Thunder===
*Have you heard thunder or seen lightning in the past year? — (The title-text of [[831: Weather Radar]] mentions the belief that thunderstorms seemed more common when one was a kid. Since the survey also asks for age this question is likely a test of that belief.)
**Yes
**No

===Flavor preference===
*Which do you prefer? (It seems to be missing the ''neither'' option...)
**Chocolate
**Vanilla

===Number (reprise)===
*Pick another number from 1 to 100 (Supposedly is should not be the same as in the first pick a number box).
**''Text box''

===Internet===
*When you think about stuff on the internet, where do you picture it being physically located? Even if you know it's not really how things work, is there a place you imagine websites and social media posts sitting before you look at them? If so, where is it?
**''Broad multi-line text box''

===Roll tongue===
*Can you {{w|Tongue rolling|roll your tongue}}?
**Yes
**No
**What?

===Toes===
*Can you pick things up with your toes?
**No
**Yes

===Age===
*How old are you?
**''Text box''

===Walls===
*What color are the walls around you right now?
**''Text box''

===Cell phone===
*What kind of cell phone do you have?
**{{w|iPhone}}
**{{w|Android (operating system)|Android}}
**Other smartphone
**Non-smartphone
**I don't have a cell phone

===Eating===
*What's the last thing you ate?
**''Text box''

===Difficult words===
*Which of these words do you know the meaning of?
*Some of these words don’t appear in any of the following dictionaries: the Oxford English Dictionary, the New Oxford American Dictionary, Wiktionary, or Dictionary.com. These words were probably made up by Randall. Perhaps the goal is to make people feel like they have a weak vocabulary because they don’t know many of the words, until they try look up the meanings and realize they have been tricked.
*More likely, the inclusion of fictitious words is a validity check. Hidden tests of the validity of responses is a part of good questionnaire design. For example, long lists of questions with "Agree-Disagree" responses will often have one or more items which are "reverse-coded" (phrased in a direction opposite to the rest of the questions): if a respondent provides a response which contradicts the pattern presented by the rest of the responses, this casts doubt on the validity of the other responses - suggesting that the respondent is not actually reading the questions properly. In the instance of Randall's survey, claiming to know the meaning of fictitious words would cast doubt on the respondent's claims of a knowing the meaning of the other words in the list.
*In addition, these false claims by respondents may themselves then be used as a source of data: for example, an analysis of the data could find that males (and/or skydivers) are more likely than females to over-represent their actual level of knowledge.
*[http://dictionary.reference.com/ Dictionary.com] has an index of difficulty (measured in pixels, with class name <code>difficulty-indicator</code>). We add it at the right of the words that have it. N/A means that a word isn't present in Dictionary.com, or that it doesn't have an index.
**Slickle – Not in any standard dictionary. However, it [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Slickle is in] the crowd-sourced in Urban Dictionary, as well as a suggested planet name in [[1253: Exoplanet Names]]
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rife Rife] – [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rife 117]
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soliloquy Soliloquy] – [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/soliloquy 150]
**Fination – not in any dictionary. Appears infrequently in Victorian texts (e.g., [http://books.google.com/books?id=ghNOAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA245&dq=Fination 1889], [http://books.google.com/books?id=nwlCAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA214&dq=Fination 1839])
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stipple Stipple] – [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/stipple 144]
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/peristeronic Peristeronic] – [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/peristeronic N/A]. Randall used it and defined it for readers in [[798: Adjectives]].
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/modicum Modicum] – [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/modicum 120]
**Trephony – Not available in reference dictionaries. An obsolete spelling of "{{w|Trephine}}" (especially when used as a verb for the process of {{w|Trepanning|trephination}}). Initially a transliteration of Greek [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=tru/panon τρυπάω] for the same.
**Tribution – A regular construction from [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tribute#Verb Tribute (verb)] using "-tion" to transform into a noun. Using this regular formation, the term would mean the act of tribute, but no examples of actual use are available. It is worth noting that the use of "tribute" as a verb is generally considered obsolete and the few forms that persist in use relate primarily to the tributary and distibutary river systems
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/phoropter Phoropter] – [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/phoropter N/A] 1.An instrument used in eye examinations to determine an individual's prescription, the patient looking through various lenses at a chart on the other side.
**Unitory – Not available in reference dictionaries. An obsolete spelling of "Unitary," chiefly British. While long obsolete in normal usage, it persisted longer in mathematics that it did elsewhere (particularly for "Unitory Method" and "Unitory Matrixes"). Example of use: [https://books.google.com/books?id=Wl1BAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA5-PA27&lpg=RA5-PA27&dq=unitory+method&source=bl&ots=rfRKJXAJqV&sig=Wsr_gV7xG6Airah9Lx1M0hi-7Zc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDsQ6AEwBmoVChMInd_R9qTbxwIVChU-Ch36IAh_#v=onepage&q=unitory%20method&f=false (1)]
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/amiable Amiable] – [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/amiable 123]
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/salient Salient] – [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/salient 69]
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/regolith Regolith] – [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/regolith 162]
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lithe Lithe] – [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lithe 105]
**Revergent – technical word from {{w|fern}} biology, referring to the edges of fern leaves which curl back on themselves (see [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00985044 Schölch, 2000])
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hubris Hubris] – [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hubris 117]
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fleek Fleek] – [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fleek N/A]
**Cadine – A rare loan-word for [https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/cadine a sultan's wife or a noble ottoman woman] which comes to English through the French. Examples of Use: [https://books.google.com/books?id=4yz-Y-_OOO0C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=cadine&f=false (1)]. Also the name of an [https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadine italian city].
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apricity Apricity] – Not available in reference dictionaries. An obsolete word for the sun's heat in winter (e.g., [http://books.google.com/books?id=CFBGAAAAYAAJ&pg=PT76&dq=apricity Bailey 1775]). According to the What If? book (page 80), this is Randall's single favourite word in the English language.

===cat===
*Please type "cat" here:
**''Text box''

===Dreams===
*Do you usually remember your dreams?
**No
**Yes

===Text editors===
*Do you have strong opinions about text editors? (See {{w|Editor war}})
**Yes
**No

===Emoji===
*How do you feel about {{w|emoji}}?
**Negative 😠 (Unicode 1f620 - Angry face)
**Positive 😊 (Unicode 263a - Smiling face)
**Neutral 😐 (Unicode 1F610 - Neutral face)

===Snow===
*Does it ever snow where you live?
**No
**Yes

===Taste of food===
*Do you strongly dislike the taste or texture of any of these things?
**Eggs
**Chocolate ice cream
**Beer
**White wine
**{{w|Carbonation}} (or Fizz)
**Red wine
**{{w|Cilantro}}
**Coffee
**Tomatoes
**Yogurt

===Beverages===
*Which of these do you regularly drink?
**Caffeinated soda (e.g. Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper)
**Noncaffeinated soda
**Coffee
**Fruit juice
**Milk
**Beer
**Wine
**Tea
**{{w|Maple syrup}}
**Water

===Random words===
*Type five random words
**''Broad multi-line text box''

===Flying===
*Are you nervous about flying?
**Yes
**No
**A little

===Favorite number===
*On a scale of 1 to 5, which number is your favorite?
**''Tick off list with numbers from 1 to 5.''

===Sandwich===
*Which of these would you consider a {{w|sandwich}}?
*(Check all that apply)
**{{w|Taco}}
**{{w|Quesadilla}}
**{{w|Submarine sandwich|Sub/Hoagie}}
**{{w|Cheesesteak}}
**{{w|Hamburger}}
**{{w|Open-faced sandwich}}
**{{w|Calzone}}

===Animal affinity===
*Which of these describes you?
*(Check all that apply)
**Dog person
**Cat person
**Half-cat half-person
**Part of a subterranean race of dog people
**Literally named "Catherine Person"

===Sense of direction===
*Would you say you have a good sense of direction?
**Yes
**No

===Socks or underwear===
*Have you ever thrown out all your different pairs of socks/underwear, bought a bunch of replacements that were all one kind, and then told all your friends how great it was and how they should do it too?
**Yes
**No
**I did the throwing out thing, but didn't talk to everyone about it
**No, but I'm totally doing that now

==Transcript==
:[A simple comic with text only. The ''click here'' part is inside a black frame.]
:Introducing
:'''The xkcd Survey'''
:A search for weird correlations
:Note: This survey is anonymous, but
:<font color="red"> all responses will be posted publicly </font>
:so people can play with the data.
:'''Click here to'''
:'''take the survey'''
:Or click here, or here.
:The whole comic is a link,
:because I still haven't gotten
:the hang of HTML imagemaps.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]

Talk:Five-Minute Comics: Part 4

2016-01-07T03:58:33Z

108.162.238.82: Adding relevant information from the xkcd forum to the discussion

How is this unpublished? Although only through an app, this comic has still been issued for distribution to the public, therefore, by definition, published. {{User:17jiangz1/signature|14:41, 29 December 2015}}

I just wanted to add that the [http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=74111 forum post about this comic] notes that this comic was accidentally posted by the site admins for xkcd, then later replaced with the current version of the comic, i.e. [[940: Oversight]]. The direct image URL for this comic now points to [https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/five_minute_comics_part_4.png this image]. Thus, the comic was not published through the unofficial xkcd app or anything like that; the more likely scenario is that the app downloaded the comic when it became available and cached it, so when the comic was replaced with [[940: Oversight]], the app did not update it. 03:58, 7 January 2016 (UTC)