explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2727: Runtime

2023-01-23T12:41:42Z

162.158.159.34: /* Explanation */ typo and phrasing (the Sun is on my screen, hopefully read/wrtten correctly this time.

{{comic
| number = 2727
| date = January 20, 2023
| title = Runtime
| image = runtime_2x.png
| imagesize = 399x389px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = At least there's a general understanding all around that Doctor Who is its own thing.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by THE XKCD CINEMATIC UNIVERSE - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The comic presents two separate conversations, which boil down to the same premise and yet differing conclusions. In one, a particular TV show is being watched, in the other a film franchise.

While it is finding its feet, a new season of a television show (perhaps commissioned, on the back of some perceived interest in the story it will tell, for a dozen or so episodes of around 50 minutes - i.e. about ten hours) is not necessarily going to get everything right in the writing style, the slant it puts on the subject matter, the cast of characters or other production values. Or at least not for mass appeal to the everyman, for whom [[Cueball]] is the archetypal representative. Nevertheless, many series ''do'' get further seasons and greatly improve. [[White Hat]] (the optimist, and clearly won over by the production) is on the way to successfully convincing Cueball to view a particular series, or perhaps to continue to watch it after becoming jaded by its early failure to live up to its hype. It sounds reasonable to Cueball, just from his friend's recommendation, to get over the hump and appreciate it "when it gets good".

A series of films, however, is seemingly a different matter. By substituting 10+ hours of filmed-for-television with something more cinematic, the prospect of getting over the exact same scale of 'hump' in a long-running set of sequels (eight films at a not unreasonable average length of 85 minutes each would ''also'' require a bit more than ten hours of commitment), is not at all enticing.

The real reason for this difference is that a television series that gets good can be expected to run for at least five seasons, whereas nine movies is already quit long for a movie series. Sitting through eight bad movies in order to understand two or three good ones is not a worthwhile tradeoff.

The mention of “after the first 8 movies” might be a reference to the long-running Fast and the Furious franchise, which now has 9 movies (plus a couple of spin-offs) at the time of this comic’s publication. The more recent movies are well-reviewed (rated “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes), even though the first four were widely panned by critics. Someone like Randall, who may have ignored the franchise when it first came out in 2001, may be wondering if he should watch the more recent ones that critics generally like; and, if so, does he need to catch up on the initial movies first?

The title text talks of the long-running British TV series that is {{w|Doctor Who}}. The original Doctor Who, running from 1963-1989 was typically low budget, for its time and locality, though initially considered cutting edge in many ways. Compared to more modern classics, and especially Hollywood sci-fi, it would be noticably not as good. The revived series (2005-present) has a much higher production budget and is typically much more aligned to modern viewers, who may wilfully ignore or not even know of the older episodes. Someone just starting to watching Doctor Who sequentially from the ''very'' first season (broadcast in 1963) would have to watch hundreds of episodes (26 'seasons', by some counts) before the series "gets good" to modern eyes, if the {{tvtropes|GrowingTheBeard|"good" point}} is the 2005 series revival, or even quite a few to reach any given key point in the original run. Thus Doctor Who is considered to be its own thing, and unlike other shows where the fans recommend you suffer through a poor first season to enjoy improvement in subsequent seasons, {{w|Whovians}} might recommend potential new fans to begin with the 2005 reboot (technically the 27th season), which was produced to appeal to all new-comers without even necessarily any cultural knowledge of what had been broadcast up until the long hiatus a decade and a half before.

There is also the wrinkle that anyone wishing to start with the original run would be out of luck, seeing as many early episodes - before the late-70s - were {{w|Doctor Who missing episodes|lost forever}}. ([https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/MissingEpisode/DoctorWho TV Tropes link]).
The BBC didn't see any value in keeping them as they couldn't rerun them, so random episodes would be disposed of or recycled for various reasons, and those episodes are gone, making many stories incomplete. Some have been recovered through discovering some fan having recorded them (in fact, the ''audio'' for every single episode has been preserved) but most lost episodes remain lost.

It is vague about Randall's precise opinion, but even the most dedicated fan would acknowledge that it has had a varying quality/charm/consistency/etc, according to one's personal tastes for such things. Comparing the original run (pre-Millenium, featuring seven key actors sequentially taking on the title role over more than four decades, and another for a standalone TV-movie) with the revived series (continuing the pattern with a similar number of additional title-actors in just half the time), and any number of 'show-runners' (producers, main writers, etc) is one possible point of contention, probably more suited to British viewers. Possibly, in Randall's case, it is just the (perceived) ups and downs in the more recent era, which has been more consistently screened in the US.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Two situations are depicted between White Hat and Cueball.]
:[Situation 1:]
:White Hat: You should keep watching! After the first season it gets really good.
:Cueball: Oh yeah, I've heard that!
:[Situation 2:]
:White Hat: You should keep watching! After the first 8 movies, they get really good.
:Cueball: Haha, what? I'm not going to sit through '''''eight''''' bad movies!
:[Caption below the panel:]
:It's weird how it's way more normal and socially acceptable to suggest someone spend 10-15 hours watching something when it's TV rather than movies.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Fiction]]
[[Category:Doctor Who]]

2721: Euler Diagrams

2023-01-07T20:29:30Z

162.158.159.34: /* Explanation */ maybe?

{{comic
| number = 2721
| date = January 6, 2023
| title = Euler Diagrams
| image = euler_diagrams_2x.png
| imagesize = 370x409px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Things Leonhard Euler created ( most of math ( overlapping circle diagrams ) a cricket bowling machine ) Things John Venn created
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by THE EULER BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In this comic, [[Cueball]] is showing an off-screen person a {{w|Venn diagram}} he made about something. The off-screen person then factually informs Cueball that it is an {{W|Euler diagram}}, not a Venn diagram, and seems about to go into the reasons. Cueball may know the reasons, as he interupts with the complaint that {{w|List of things named after Leonhard Euler|many things}} are named for {{w|Leonhard Euler}} (specifically {{w|Euler's constant}} and {{w|Euler's function}}) and just wants to call the diagram a Venn diagram to give {{w|John Venn}} a more equal share of the fame. His off-screen friend refuses, and mockingly states that numbers are now called "Euler letters", which is currently false.{{citation needed}} Modern {{w|Arabic numerals}} predate Euler by at least a century, and other numerals existed before that.

A Venn diagram is "a widely used diagram style that shows the logical relation between sets". It shows overlap of items in different categories (sets) by using overlapping circles (or other shapes) to stand in for categories. If an item is within a certain circle, it is in the category the circle represents. So in a Venn diagram of "animals" and "fuzzy things", "cat" would be in the overlap between both circles, "frog" would be inside only "animals", and "kiwifruit" would only be in "fuzzy things". "Crystals" would be outside both
circles.

{{w|John Venn}} was not the first to invent the idea of drawing regions whose overlap shows the intersection of sets -- that was popularized by Euler (although he may not have been the first to do it) and was known as {{w|Euler Diagram}}s. Venn's innovation, roughly 100 years later, was to consistently draw ALL intersections of sets, even those intersections that had no members. In a Venn diagram, all 'circles' must overlap with all other circles, even if there are no items in the overlap. This is easy enough for 2 and 3 sets, but as the number of sets increases the diagrams can get [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22159-logic-blooms-with-new-11-set-venn-diagram/ rather complicated] ([https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/tctianchi/pyvenn/venn6.png Example]), and the sets can start looking very non-circular. An Euler diagram is required to depict only the non-empty combinations/sets, and therefore does not have this constraint. The diagram in the comic does not have any overlap between the left and right sections so, while it is an Euler diagram, it is not a Venn diagram.

[[File:Euler Diagrams title text.png|300px|thumb|right|The title text as a Venn (and, simultaneously, an Euler) diagram]]
The title text is an example of a "written" Venn diagram, with Leonhard Euler creating "most of math", John Venn creating a {{w|cricket}} bowling machine, and both of them having created overlapping circle diagrams.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} 
:[Cueball is standing in front of a whiteboard, evidently giving a talk. The title "Venn Diagram of" is visible, along with three partially overlapping circles and various illegible text.]
:Offscreen voice: Actually, that's an ''Euler'' diagram, because-
:Cueball (palms upraised pleadingly): Come '''''onnnn.'''''
:Cueball: '''''Everything''''' is named after Euler. Euler's constant, Euler's function.
:Cueball: Can't we let John Venn have this?
:Offscreen voice: No.
:Offscreen voice: Also, numbers are now "Euler letters."

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Euler diagrams]]
[[Category:Venn diagrams]]
[[Category:Sport]]

2721: Euler Diagrams

2023-01-07T20:27:40Z

162.158.159.34: /* Explanation */ As the elements were already there, make the factualities more factual, and the reasons for the contrariness more obvious.

{{comic
| number = 2721
| date = January 6, 2023
| title = Euler Diagrams
| image = euler_diagrams_2x.png
| imagesize = 370x409px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Things Leonhard Euler created ( most of math ( overlapping circle diagrams ) a cricket bowling machine ) Things John Venn created
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by THE EULER BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In this comic, [[Cueball]] is showing an off-screen person a {{w|Venn diagram}} he made about something. The off-screen person then factually informs Cueball that it is an {{W|Euler diagram}}, not a Venn diagram, and seems about to go into the reasons. Cueball may know the reasons, as he interupts with the complaint that {{w|List of things named after Leonhard Euler|many things}} are named for {{w|Leonhard Euler}} (specifically {{w|Euler's constant}} and {{w|Euler's function}}) and just wants to call the diagram a Venn diagram to give {{w|John Venn}} a more equal share of the credit. His off-screen friend refuses, and mockingly states that numbers are now called "Euler letters", which is currently false.{{citation needed}} Modern {{w|Arabic numerals}} predate Euler by at least a century, and other numerals existed before that.

A Venn diagram is "a widely used diagram style that shows the logical relation between sets". It shows overlap of items in different categories (sets) by using overlapping circles (or other shapes) to stand in for categories. If an item is within a certain circle, it is in the category the circle represents. So in a Venn diagram of "animals" and "fuzzy things", "cat" would be in the overlap between both circles, "frog" would be inside only "animals", and "kiwifruit" would only be in "fuzzy things". "Crystals" would be outside both
circles.

{{w|John Venn}} was not the first to invent the idea of drawing regions whose overlap shows the intersection of sets -- that was popularized by Euler (although he may not have been the first to do it) and was known as {{w|Euler Diagram}}s. Venn's innovation, roughly 100 years later, was to consistently draw ALL intersections of sets, even those intersections that had no members. In a Venn diagram, all 'circles' must overlap with all other circles, even if there are no items in the overlap. This is easy enough for 2 and 3 sets, but as the number of sets increases the diagrams can get [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22159-logic-blooms-with-new-11-set-venn-diagram/ rather complicated] ([https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/tctianchi/pyvenn/venn6.png Example]), and the sets can start looking very non-circular. An Euler diagram is required to depict only the non-empty combinations/sets, and therefore does not have this constraint. The diagram in the comic does not have any overlap between the left and right sections so, while it is an Euler diagram, it is not a Venn diagram.

[[File:Euler Diagrams title text.png|300px|thumb|right|The title text as a Venn (and, simultaneously, an Euler) diagram]]
The title text is an example of a "written" Venn diagram, with Leonhard Euler creating "most of math", John Venn creating a {{w|cricket}} bowling machine, and both of them having created overlapping circle diagrams.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} 
:[Cueball is standing in front of a whiteboard, evidently giving a talk. The title "Venn Diagram of" is visible, along with three partially overlapping circles and various illegible text.]
:Offscreen voice: Actually, that's an ''Euler'' diagram, because-
:Cueball (palms upraised pleadingly): Come '''''onnnn.'''''
:Cueball: '''''Everything''''' is named after Euler. Euler's constant, Euler's function.
:Cueball: Can't we let John Venn have this?
:Offscreen voice: No.
:Offscreen voice: Also, numbers are now "Euler letters."

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Euler diagrams]]
[[Category:Venn diagrams]]
[[Category:Sport]]

2721: Euler Diagrams

2023-01-07T20:17:42Z

162.158.159.34: /* Explanation */ No need to hedge the bets on it...

{{comic
| number = 2721
| date = January 6, 2023
| title = Euler Diagrams
| image = euler_diagrams_2x.png
| imagesize = 370x409px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Things Leonhard Euler created ( most of math ( overlapping circle diagrams ) a cricket bowling machine ) Things John Venn created
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by THE EULER BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In this comic, [[Cueball]] is showing an off-screen person a {{w|Venn diagram}} he made about something. The off-screen person then informs Cueball that it is in fact an {{W|Euler diagram}}, not a Venn diagram (which is true). Cueball then proceeds to complain that {{w|List of things named after Leonhard Euler|many things}} are named for {{w|Leonhard Euler}} (specifically {{w|Euler's constant}} and {{w|Euler's function}}) and wants to call the diagram a Venn diagram to give {{w|John Venn}} more credit. His off-screen friend refuses, and mockingly states that numbers are now called "Euler letters", which is currently false.{{citation needed}} Modern {{w|Arabic numerals}} predate Euler by at least a century, and other numerals existed before that.

A Venn diagram is "a widely used diagram style that shows the logical relation between sets". It shows overlap of items in different categories (sets) by using overlapping circles (or other shapes) to stand in for categories. If an item is within a certain circle, it is in the category the circle represents. So in a Venn diagram of "animals" and "fuzzy things", "cat" would be in the overlap between both circles, "frog" would be inside only "animals", and "kiwifruit" would only be in "fuzzy things". "Crystals" would be outside both
circles.

{{w|John Venn}} was not the first to invent the idea of drawing regions whose overlap shows the intersection of sets -- that was popularized by Euler (although he may not have been the first to do it) and was known as {{w|Euler Diagram}}s. Venn's innovation, roughly 100 years later, was to consistently draw ALL intersections of sets, even those intersections that had no members. In a Venn diagram, all 'circles' must overlap with all other circles, even if there are no items in the overlap. This is easy enough for 2 and 3 sets, but as the number of sets increases the diagrams can get [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22159-logic-blooms-with-new-11-set-venn-diagram/ rather complicated] ([https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/tctianchi/pyvenn/venn6.png Example]), and the sets can start looking very non-circular. An Euler diagram is required to depict only the non-empty combinations/sets, and therefore does not have this constraint. The diagram in the comic does not have any overlap between the left and right sections so, while it is an Euler diagram, it is not a Venn diagram.

[[File:Euler Diagrams title text.png|300px|thumb|right|The title text as a Venn (and, simultaneously, an Euler) diagram]]
The title text is an example of a "written" Venn diagram, with Leonhard Euler creating "most of math", John Venn creating a {{w|cricket}} bowling machine, and both of them having created overlapping circle diagrams.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} 
:[Cueball is standing in front of a whiteboard, evidently giving a talk. The title "Venn Diagram of" is visible, along with three partially overlapping circles and various illegible text.]
:Offscreen voice: Actually, that's an ''Euler'' diagram, because-
:Cueball (palms upraised pleadingly): Come '''''onnnn.'''''
:Cueball: '''''Everything''''' is named after Euler. Euler's constant, Euler's function.
:Cueball: Can't we let John Venn have this?
:Offscreen voice: No.
:Offscreen voice: Also, numbers are now "Euler letters."

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Euler diagrams]]
[[Category:Venn diagrams]]
[[Category:Sport]]

2456: Types of Scientific Paper

2021-04-29T13:01:15Z

162.158.159.34: /* Explanation */ Some interpretations

{{comic
| number = 2456
| date = April 28, 2021
| title = Types of Scientific Paper
| image = types_of_scientific_paper.png
| titletext = Others include "We've incrementally improved the estimate of this coefficient," "Maybe all these categories are wrong," and "We found a way to make student volunteers worse at tasks."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a RESEARCH DEPARTMENT ON A LUNCHBREAK. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In this comic, Randall describes categories of scientific papers with somewhat humorous generalized titles.

{| class="wikitable"
|+Breakdown of Papers
|-
!Paper Title
!Explanation
!Article Description
|-
!scope=row|We put a camera somewhere new
|This may involve miniaturisation or other improvements of imaging sensors, power supply, transmission or retention of data, environmental hardening and (possibly) recovery afterwards. Photographs and videos can be especially helpful in understanding what is or was going on, especially for the layman, than more limited signal traces.

Cameras have been inserted into ''every'' obvious bodily orifice (including swallowed, to be later excreted), placed in habitats to monitor wildlife, attached to wildlife to monitor habitats, sent into volcanic craters/ocean trenches/high altitudes/nuclear reactors, launched into space and sent past/round/onto several of the solar-system's more interesting bodies. This makes the "somewhere new" claim intriguing, possibly even comparable to 'clickbait'.
|There are no headers, so the text may discuss the records without undertaking a more structured study. Includes a large figure, likely an image captured with the camera.
|-
!scope=row|Hey, I found a trove of old records! They don't turn out to be particularly useful, but still, cool!
|Rather than starting with the aim of investigating some question, and finding some way of answering it by uncovering evidence, sometimes a writer may have stumbled upon a cache of historic documents that they then feel compelled to justify the resulting 'WikiWalk' they may have found themselves sucked into. The author may be far more excited about this than any future reader.
|Small figure may show the most interesting fragment of the records.
|-
!scope=row|My colleague is wrong and I can finally prove it
|This title refers to the occasional rivalries between scientists within a field, which can push them to seek proof that they, and not their colleague, are correct. It reflects a tone of smug self-satisfaction.
|Note the lack of headers, suggesting an argument more than an explanation of data
|-
!scope=row|The immune system is at it again
|The human immune system is notoriously complex, and there are countless papers in medical fields just describing its strangeness. While it is best known for preventing and battling infections, in auto-immune disease, it can also turn against the body that it is supposed to protect. Moreover it can overreact, for instance in allergic reactions or in a potentially lethal {{w|cytokine storm}} known to occur in certain viral infections, including {{w|Influenza}} and {{w|COVID-19}}. The title may convey exasperation with the amorphous nature of their study subject.
|
|-
!scope=row|We figured out how to make this exotic material, so email us if you need some
|Researchers often attempt to create materials despite there not being any demand, predicting that in the future their material will be game-changing without any actual applications. These researchers have created such a material, and are offering to produce it for anyone who needs it. It is couched in terms of having created an answer for which there was not yet any proper question.
|
|-
!scope=row|What are fish even doing down there
|Deep sea marine biology regularly discovers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7QXdlSBGGY strange lifeforms] in unexpected places, and theories explaining deep sea ecosystems are regularly confounded by new data.

Scientists may also bump into marine organisms when looking for something else. For example, one planned underwater neutrino detector [https://www.nature.com/articles/srep44938 picked up bioluminescence instead].

Whichever way, the title probably reflects a totally unexpected result that is possibly too cross-disciplinary to be properly comprehended as an actual scientific advance by the authors.
|This paper does not appear to have any headers, implying a longer, free-flowing format.
|-
!scope=row|This task I had to do anyway turned out to be hard enough for its own paper
|There is a huge variety in the complexity and importance of subjects studied in scientific papers, and often some supposedly easy task will be sufficiently complicated as to merit its own paper.

The author may be glad to have been able to turn mundane 'housekeeping' activities, that don't normally do much to enhance academic reputations, into an actual opportunity to be cite-worthy.
|
|-
!scope=row|Hey, at least we showed that this method can produce results! That's not nothing, right?
|One of the struggles of the scientific method is that many experiments will not produce the results scientists desired or expected. Negative or conflicting results of well-conducted research are as important as positive or dramatic ones, but are often ignored in favor of more novel findings. As a result, some journals are established specifically for negative results, reducing the bias towards only positive claims that may actually be outliers or anomalies.

In this case, the authors may otherwise have worked on their problem and been left with no citable proof of their efforts. The title perhaps reflects an attempt to present this as 'success' of a different kind, rather than a submission to such a null/negative-results platform.
|
|-
!scope=row|Check out this weird thing one of us saw while out for a walk
|This paper may be imagined as an opportunistic publication. A department or team has seen itself low down on the local 'league table' for academic output. A brainstorming session for a way of rectifying this led to desperately seizing upon the first idle comment made (in lieu of any better sounding ideas) that can somehow be shoehorned into their respective subject area, and is now being presented similar to "this one weird thing" clickbait titles that almost always oversell their content.

This also works in the context of entomology. Insects have the most species of any class of animals [https://www.si.edu/spotlight/buginfo/bugnos by a wide margin], but due to their small size, they're not easily seen. As a result, new species are constantly being discovered in places as innocuous as [https://wildlife.org/video-entomologists-discover-30-new-species-in-la-backyards/ someone's backyard.]
|Includes several large figures, likely close-up photographs of the weird thing. There are no headers, as the paper may have little background or methodology, just observations.
|-
!scope=row|We are 500 scientists and here's what we've been up to for the last 10 years
| Some papers summarize the work of big research teams, like those working on the [https://repositorio.uc.cl/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11534/13948/Observation%20of%20a%20new%20particle%20in%20the%20search%20for%20the%20Standard%20Model%20Higgs%20boson%20with%20the%20ATLAS%20detector%20at%20the%20LHC.pdf Higgs Boson] (list of authors starts at page 17 and goes to page 26 with foot notes about authors to page 29) or LIGO. Since the discoveries which are made are a team effort, probably outlasting many of the individual tenures involved, the papers have many authors listed.
A credit for participation may not mean any particularly great contribution by each individual, but being left out (even for one summer's secondment, seven years before any results could be recorded) would be taken as a slight, and an opportunity missed to be 'citable' in the future.
|A huge portion of the page is taken up by the presumably 500 authors' names, above the main horizontal bar.
|-
!scope=row|Some thoughts on how everyone else is bad at research
|Similar to the "my colleague is wrong" paper, but in this case applied to far greater swathes of the community by the author(s) of this (possibly unfocussed) tract. Usually a "systematic review", the words 'some thoughts' might indicate a meta-approach with no original research - and possibly a passive-aggressive style of assessment.
|No header sections, possibly because these particular thoughts are in the form of an essay or letter without an accompanying investigation.
|-
!scope=row|We scanned some undergraduates
|Some initial research, especially that on a low budget, may recruit students at the same institution as easily available test-subjects. Quite often these are psychological or sociological studies, but can involve more medical (but non-invasive) 'scans', from simple eyeball-tracking to full-body MRI. The low-key approach to the title (concentrating blandly upon the method, compared to some of the more 'clickbait' titles above) may indicate that the results obtained are very trivial and no great developments were even made in implementation. Alternately, this is a truly ground-breaking paper obscured entirely by the lead author's over-narrow professional focus and avoidance of any hype.

When misread as "scammed", this paper can also refer to numerous famous psychological studies done before the establishment of certain ethical rules, such as the Milgram experiment.
|
|-
!scope=row|We've incrementally improved the estimate of this coefficient
|Often scientific research, e.g. in cosmology or physics, will work with an assumed constant value that is known to be only an 'educated guess' of the actual definite value, or an inclusive range. However accurate/certain this is, further experimentation or observation may further narrow down the uncertainty involved to a statistically significant degree.

Even if these improvements may seem trivial to those outside the discipline (e.g. narrowing down a seemingly esoteric value from 99.99% certainty to 99.995% certainty), they are probably understood as significant achievements by those aware of the effort needed to obtain such diminishing returns, and the authors are probably very excited to have done what they did.
|rowspan="3"|(Only referenced in Title Text)
|-
!scope=row|Maybe all these categories are wrong
|In some field that relies heavily upon classification (e.g. phylogenetic biology, or the Standard Model in physics) sometimes observations arise that cast doubt on the previously established ideas. It seems that this may have happened here, hopefully with a suggestion of how to reimagine the situation.

The article may have been written with with a sense of euphoria (the chance to present a paradigm shift in thinking, to rewrite the textbooks) or pessimism (it demonstrates only the failings in current thinking, without any obvious solution).

Alternatively, it may be a reference to the categories of papers that this comic proposes.
|-
!scope=row|We found a way to make student volunteers worse at tasks
|Possibly a psychology experiment, and maybe not even the result expected. In general, the repetition of an activity will induce greater skill/capacity in a tested individual. By accident or design, the study group in this instance has induced the opposite correlation. (There ''are'', however, some studies that explicitly look at how e.g. lack of sleep reduces productivity.)

Exactly what emotion the title reflects might depend upon whether the worsening was an intended result, or even how the team were able to refocuss and seize upon the adverse outcomes.
|}

===Trivia===
Originally, this comic's title text misspelled "volunteers" as "volunters". This could have been intentional (''we'' might be the volunteers), but probably not as it was quickly corrected.

==Table of papers==
{| class="wikitable"
|+Breakdown of Papers
|-
!Paper Title
!Explanation
!Article Description
|-
!scope=row|We put a camera somewhere new
|This may involve miniaturisation or other improvements of imaging sensors, power supply, transmission or retention of data, environmental hardening and (possibly) recovery afterwards. Photographs and videos can be especially helpful in understanding what is or was going on, especially for the layman, than more limited signal traces.

Cameras have been inserted into ''every'' obvious bodily orifice (including swallowed, to be later excreted), placed in habitats to monitor wildlife, attached to wildlife to monitor habitats, sent into volcanic craters/ocean trenches/high altitudes/nuclear reactors, launched into space and sent past/round/onto several of the solar-system's more interesting bodies.

|While the headers contain no legible text, the text of such an article might discuss the records without undertaking a more structured study. Includes a large figure, likely an image captured with the camera.
|-
!scope=row|Hey, I found a trove of old records! They don't turn out to be particularly useful, but still, cool!
|Rather than starting with the aim of investigating some question, and finding some way of answering it by uncovering evidence, sometimes a writer may have stumbled upon a cache of historic documents that they then feel compelled to justify the resulting 'WikiWalk' they may have found themselves sucked into.
|Small figure may show the most interesting fragment of the records.
|-
!scope=row|My colleague is wrong and I can finally prove it
|This title refers to the occasional rivalries between scientists within a field, which can push them to seek proof that they, and not their colleague, are correct.
|Note the lack of headers, suggesting an argument more than an explanation of data
|-
!scope=row|The immune system is at it again
|The human immune system is notoriously complex, and there are countless papers in medical fields just describing its strangeness. While it is best known for preventing and battling infections, in auto-immune disease, it can also turn against the body that it is supposed to protect. Moreover it can overreact, for instance in allergic reactions or in a potentially lethal {{w|cytokine storm}} known to occur in certain viral infections, including {{w|Influenza}} and {{w|COVID-19}}.
|
|-
!scope=row|We figured out how to make this exotic material, so email us if you need some
|Researchers often attempt to create materials despite there not being any demand, predicting that in the future their material will be game-changing without any actual applications. These researchers have created such a material, and are offering to produce it for anyone who needs it.
|
|-
!scope=row|What are fish even doing down there
|Deep sea marine biology regularly discovers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7QXdlSBGGY strange lifeforms] in unexpected places, and theories explaining deep sea ecosystems are regularly confounded by new data.

Scientists may also bump into marine organisms when looking for something else. For example, one planned underwater neutrino detector [https://www.nature.com/articles/srep44938 picked up bioluminescence instead].
|This paper does not appear to have any headers, implying a longer, free-flowing format.
|-
!scope=row|This task I had to do anyway turned out to be hard enough for its own paper
|There is a huge variety in the complexity and importance of subjects studied in scientific papers, and often some supposedly easy task will be sufficiently complicated as to merit its own paper.
|
|-
!scope=row|Hey, at least we showed that this method can produce results! That's not nothing, right?
|One of the struggles of the scientific method is that many experiments will not produce the results scientists desired or expected. Negative or conflicting results of well-conducted research are as important as positive or dramatic ones, but are often ignored in favor of more novel findings. As a result, some journals are established specifically for negative results.
|
|-
!scope=row|Check out this weird thing one of us saw while out for a walk
|This paper may be imagined as an opportunistic publication. A department or team has seen itself low down on the local 'league table' for academic output. A brainstorming session for a way of rectifying this led to desperately seizing upon the first idle comment made (in lieu of any better sounding ideas) that can somehow be shoehorned into their respective subject area.

This also works in the context of entomology. Insects have the most species of any class of animals [https://www.si.edu/spotlight/buginfo/bugnos by a wide margin], but due to their small size, they're not easily seen. As a result, new species are constantly being discovered in places as innocuous as [https://wildlife.org/video-entomologists-discover-30-new-species-in-la-backyards/ someone's backyard.]
|Includes several large figures, likely close-up photographs of the weird thing. There are no headers, as the paper may have little background or methodology, just observations.
|-
!scope=row|We are 500 scientists and here's what we've been up to for the last 10 years
| Some papers summarize the work of big research teams, like those working on the [https://repositorio.uc.cl/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11534/13948/Observation%20of%20a%20new%20particle%20in%20the%20search%20for%20the%20Standard%20Model%20Higgs%20boson%20with%20the%20ATLAS%20detector%20at%20the%20LHC.pdf Higgs Boson] (list of authors starts at page 17 and goes to page 26 with foot notes about authors to page 29) or LIGO. Since the discoveries which are made are a team effort, probably outlasting many of the individual tenures involved, the papers have many authors listed.
A credit for participation may not mean any particularly great contribution by each individual, but being left out (even for one summer's secondment, seven years before any results could be recorded) would be taken as a slight, and an opportunity missed to be 'citable' in the future.
|A huge portion of the page is taken up by the presumably 500 authors' names, above the main horizontal bar.
|-
!scope=row|Some thoughts on how everyone else is bad at research
|Similar to the "my colleague is wrong" paper, but in this case applied to far greater swathes of the community by the author(s) of this (possibly unfocussed) tract. Usually a "systematic review".
|No header sections, possibly because these particular thoughts are in the form of an essay or letter without an accompanying investigation.
|-
!scope=row|We scanned some undergraduates
|Some initial research, especially that on a low budget, may recruit students at the same institution as easily available test-subjects. Quite often these are psychological or sociological studies, but can involve more medical (but non-invasive) 'scans', from simple eyeball-tracking to full-body MRI.

When misread as "scammed", this paper can also refer to numerous famous psychological studies done before the establishment of certain ethical rules, such as the Milgram experiment.
|
|-
!scope=row|We've incrementally improved the estimate of this coefficient
|Often scientific research, e.g. in cosmology or physics, will work with an assumed constant value that is known to be only an 'educated guess' of the actual definite value, or an inclusive range. However accurate/certain this is, further experimentation or observation may further narrow down the uncertainty involved to a statistically significant degree.
|rowspan="3"|(Only referenced in Title Text)
|-
!scope=row|Maybe all these categories are wrong
|In some field that relies heavily upon classification (e.g. phylogenetic biology, or the Standard Model in physics) sometimes observations arise that cast doubt on the previously established ideas. It seems that this may have happened here, hopefully with a suggestion of how to reimagine the situation.

Alternatively, it may be a reference to the categories of papers that this comic proposes.
|-
!scope=row|We found a way to make student volunteers worse at tasks
|Possibly a psychology experiment, and maybe not even the result expected. In general, the repetition of an activity will induce greater skill/capacity in a tested individual. By accident or design, the study group in this instance has induced the opposite correlation. (There ''are'', however, some studies that explicitly look at how e.g. lack of sleep reduces productivity.)
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Could need description of each paper}}
:[Heading:]
:Types of Scientific Paper

:[An array of 4 rows with 3 scientific papers each, is shown. The first page of each is shown, but only the papers titles are legible. Black lines for headings, several lines for paragraphs of text and white rectangles indicating figures are used to make each paper look different. Titles are as follows:]
:We put a camera somewhere new
:Hey, I found a trove of old records! They don't turn out to be particularly useful, but still, cool!
:My colleague is wrong and I can finally prove it
:The immune system is at it again
:We figured out how to make this exotic material, so email us if you need some
:What are fish even doing down there
:This task I had to do anyway turned out to be hard enough for its own paper
:Hey, at least we showed that this method can produce results! That's not nothing, right?
:Check out this weird thing one of us saw while out for a walk
:We are 500 scientists and here's what we've been up to for the last 10 years
:Some thoughts on how everyone else is bad at research
:We scanned some undergraduates

==Trivia==
*Originally, this comic's title text misspelled "volunteers" as "volunters".
**This could have been intentional (''we'' might be the volunteers)
**But it was not as it was quickly corrected.
*Another comic, [[2012: Thorough Analysis]], similarly categorizes or mocks research papers.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Research Papers]]
[[Category:Science]]

2456: Types of Scientific Paper

2021-04-28T21:55:59Z

162.158.159.34: /* Explanation */

2454: Fully Vaccinated

2021-04-23T16:09:08Z

162.158.159.34: /* Explanation */ Needs a lot of tidying. And is it Ponytail I'm talking about? I forget. Generic for now, until I get another view of the comic.

{{comic
| number = 2454
| date = April 23, 2021
| title = Fully Vaccinated
| image = fully_vaccinated.png
| titletext = "You still can't walk into someone's house without being invited!" "What/ Oh, I see your confusion. No, this vaccine is for a bat VIRUS. I'm fine with doorways and garlic and stuff."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a FULLY VACCINATED VAMPIRE. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The CDC said that once people are fully vaccinated, they are able to visit other people's houses (and not risk speading/catching coronavirus). The implication, of course, is that you still need other people's consent before visiting their houses. The humor in this comic comes from Megan being unaware of this and trying to enter a random stranger's house as she is fully vaccinated.

Restrictions to socialising, brought in as various governments reacted to the emergent COVID-19 Pandemic, often disallowed or discouraged entering the houses of family, friends, etc, beyond a mutually isolating 'support bubble', which meant that many house visits that might have occured beforehand were no longer advisable.

With the development and distribution of vaccines, and the eventual receiving of a second dose as applicable, the rules have been modified to allow those protected/protecting to once again resume some degree of their prior outgoing behaviour where the risks have been mitigated.

In this instance, though, someone has taken the advice even further. Rather than opening back up to a situation closer to the 'old normal', they have taken it as an official sanction to ''exceed'' the old social limits and pester complete strangers.

(Alternately, this ''is'' what they always used to do, and only stopped 'for the duration', this unlucky householder being (one of) the first to be subjected to this 'guerilla visiting' now that there seems to be no reason not to continue.)

The Title Text invokes a commonly understood form of property law, but due to a misunderstanding it becomes mixed up with a commonly understood element of vampire lore.

==Transcript==
:[Megan is standing in front of a three step stair leading up to an open door. She has one hand in the air, while talking to someone inside the house, who replies. The ground she and the stairs are on, has small turfs of grass.]
:Megan: Hi, I'm here to visit!
:Voice coming out of the door: Do I know you?
:Megan: No, it's cool, I'm two weeks past my second dose.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Remember, once you're fully vaccinated, the CDC says you're free to visit other people's houses.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:COVID-19 vaccine]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

Talk:2363: Message Boards

2020-09-24T03:42:53Z

162.158.159.34:

Randall stimulates people doing this to their parents? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.234|108.162.219.234]] 01:23, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
:He doesn't necessarily think it's likely. But as the caption says, he's amused by the fact that it's possible because the Internet and message boards have been around long enough. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 02:04, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

It would be interesting to know how many online message boards have actually been in continuous operation for 20 years. The original Usenet newsgroups are actually twice that old, but what about Internet boards? [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 02:04, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
:Reddit is starting to get there, being 15 years old now. I also do know some forums that started in 2003~2004 and are still active (mostly ones tied to still-updating webcomics). So not quite 20 years, but close. --[[User:Elifia|Elifia]] ([[User talk:Elifia|talk]]) 03:04, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
::There'll be BBSes (one I once used is still going, last I checked, well over 30 years old, pre-Web, not sure how many old-guard are there, as I've not for 25 years) and that would rival even pre-split Usenet. A MUD I know (all my characters long timed-out) is still going strong since pre-Web times, too. IRC isn't exactly persistent (and has changed a lot) but still exists. Even if the likes of anon.penet.fi have been closed, there'll be mailer-gateways/request-by-mail things (I used to ask one for Freeware!) on obscure servers. Perhaps Wollongong University still has a Gopher server (one memorable 'place' I visited on a link-to-link round the world trip, back just before I heard of the Berners-Lee thing). I have a habit of forgetting webforums (earliest currently used one was signed into only back in 2008) and a late-'90s one I recall fondly got so spammed (despite whatever passed for CAPTCHA in those days) that the webmaster Read-Onlied it, and domain is now expired. If I was a better person at staying in touch, I'm sure I could have been continuously active for sufficient time on a single platform (I fell off a Usenet group when I lost a newsfeed and refused to use the then-new-fangled Google Groups interface, just the latest insult since WebTV, the push from AOL and the whole Eternal September thing). So, anecdotally, I know there's a good chance. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.34|162.158.159.34]] 03:42, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Talk:2360: Common Star Types

2020-09-17T19:55:40Z

162.158.159.34: Another miskey! Corrected (contributions) but then semi-synonymically replaced anyway.

I'm thinking a table (Name, appearance, summary, ¿is real?, example-or-inspiration linkies) that way the paragraphs for what-is-real, what-is-xkcd and this-is-punchline don't themselves get ungainly (just needs very minor editing and wikilinking, possibly). And apols again to the first explained who seemed to appreciate their submission as only a placeholder so I overwrote rather than integrated. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.171|162.158.158.171]] 22:37, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eta_Carinae&oldid=978789727] remained on Wikipedia for all of six minutes :/ [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.149|162.158.62.149]] 23:40, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Ten minutes, surely? [[User:Lightcaller|Lightcaller]] ([[User talk:Lightcaller|talk]]) 01:55, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

[https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jda.2017.10.005 Wat.] ([http://web.archive.org/web/20200917015430/https://openreview.net/pdf?id=SJgdPcVDPS Full text here.]) [[User:Lightcaller|Lightcaller]] ([[User talk:Lightcaller|talk]]) 01:55, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

And of course Brad Pitt is a star of yet another type... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.188|108.162.215.188]] 04:53, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Re Beige Gorgon, this is the average colour of the universe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_latte

Note that FeII spectral lines actually refer to signs of Fe+ ions (neutral is 'I', every ionisation level above that adds 1) but I can't see it mattering to anyone who doesn't read this far and it'd certainly have FeIII lines as well for 2+, or maybe I'm confused myself, so I supported the (chemistry) Ferrous association in the description with a link while I was editing nearby. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.19|162.158.158.19]] 09:45, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

My opinion: I'm kinda getting bored of this types of comics here - listing some real scientific stuff and some made up. There's been a lot of them, and they seem repetitive - no real new humor. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.103.125|162.158.103.125]] 11:30, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
:YMMV? Looking at the last 100, if I include a very broad justification for inclusion I get just 20% one could say are 'this type', but sub-10% (with [[2351]] the most recent) if I am more realistic about comparison. And I generally like them, but each to their own. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.32|162.158.159.32]] 14:10, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

...[https://inkbunny.net/s/1448946 Teal] [https://www.furaffinity.net/view/29652825/ Sp][https://theartofmtg.tumblr.com/post/54153978749/isperia-supreme-judge-by-scott-m-fischer hi][https://www.magic-ville.com/fr/carte_art?ref=10m073 nx]? :P [[Special:Contributions/172.69.63.201|172.69.63.201]] 14:44, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Question: What is the style guide for British vs. American Spelling (e.g., Color vs. Colour) in explain xkcd? I've seen quite a bit of that on this page. If it comes down to a vote, I think that we should stick with American spelling in general, because Randall is American. [[User:Argis13|Argis13]] ([[User talk:Argis13|talk]]) 18:05, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
:I believe the wiki standard is "consistency within an article" usually according to how the original contributors set it, where there isn't another factor (like direct quotation). Though before now I've seen perfectly consistent non-US spellings being (incompletely) systematically Americanized over an Anglicised (but possibly just Commonwealth/acceptible-everywhere-but-the-US) original. I don't think Johnson vs. Webster has yet arisen in a 'bracket' comic (or perhaps Merriam-Webster/OED to be actually current) so I don't know we can claim language-lover Randall ''automatically'' claims home-turf advantage. ;) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.32|162.158.159.32]] 19:46, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Talk:2360: Common Star Types

2020-09-17T19:52:32Z

162.158.159.34: Editing myself. A nasty habit - I'll probably go blind!

I'm thinking a table (Name, appearance, summary, ¿is real?, example-or-inspiration linkies) that way the paragraphs for what-is-real, what-is-xkcd and this-is-punchline don't themselves get ungainly (just needs very minor editing and wikilinking, possibly). And apols again to the first explained who seemed to appreciate their submission as only a placeholder so I overwrote rather than integrated. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.171|162.158.158.171]] 22:37, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eta_Carinae&oldid=978789727] remained on Wikipedia for all of six minutes :/ [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.149|162.158.62.149]] 23:40, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Ten minutes, surely? [[User:Lightcaller|Lightcaller]] ([[User talk:Lightcaller|talk]]) 01:55, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

[https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jda.2017.10.005 Wat.] ([http://web.archive.org/web/20200917015430/https://openreview.net/pdf?id=SJgdPcVDPS Full text here.]) [[User:Lightcaller|Lightcaller]] ([[User talk:Lightcaller|talk]]) 01:55, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

And of course Brad Pitt is a star of yet another type... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.188|108.162.215.188]] 04:53, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Re Beige Gorgon, this is the average colour of the universe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_latte

Note that FeII spectral lines actually refer to signs of Fe+ ions (neutral is 'I', every ionisation level above that adds 1) but I can't see it mattering to anyone who doesn't read this far and it'd certainly have FeIII lines as well for 2+, or maybe I'm confused myself, so I supported the (chemistry) Ferrous association in the description with a link while I was editing nearby. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.19|162.158.158.19]] 09:45, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

My opinion: I'm kinda getting bored of this types of comics here - listing some real scientific stuff and some made up. There's been a lot of them, and they seem repetitive - no real new humor. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.103.125|162.158.103.125]] 11:30, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
:YMMV? Looking at the last 100, if I include a very broad justification for inclusion I get just 20% one could say are 'this type', but sub-10% (with [[2351]] the most recent) if I am more realistic about comparison. And I generally like them, but each to their own. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.32|162.158.159.32]] 14:10, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

...[https://inkbunny.net/s/1448946 Teal] [https://www.furaffinity.net/view/29652825/ Sp][https://theartofmtg.tumblr.com/post/54153978749/isperia-supreme-judge-by-scott-m-fischer hi][https://www.magic-ville.com/fr/carte_art?ref=10m073 nx]? :P [[Special:Contributions/172.69.63.201|172.69.63.201]] 14:44, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Question: What is the style guide for British vs. American Spelling (e.g., Color vs. Colour) in explain xkcd? I've seen quite a bit of that on this page. If it comes down to a vote, I think that we should stick with American spelling in general, because Randall is American. [[User:Argis13|Argis13]] ([[User talk:Argis13|talk]]) 18:05, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
:I believe the wiki standard is "consistency within an article" usually according to how the original contribations set it, where there isn't another factor (like direct quotation). Though before now I've seen perfectly consistent non-US spellings being (incompletely) systematically Americanized over an Anglicised (but possibly just Commonwealth/acceptible-everywhere-but-the-US) original. I don't think Johnson vs. Webster has yet arisen in a 'bracket' comic (or perhaps Merriam-Webster/OED to be actually current) so I don't know we can claim language-lover Randall ''automatically'' claims home-turf advantage. ;) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.32|162.158.159.32]] 19:46, 17 September 2020 (UTC)