explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2734: Electron Color

2023-02-09T15:12:57Z

172.68.34.45:

Electrons have no color?! BUt lIgHTnIng strIKeS aRe YEllOw, aND LigHTNing IS MaDe uP of eLECTrOns.[[Special:Contributions/172.71.254.115|172.71.254.115]] 22:43, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
: Actually most colors are emitted by electrons orbiting atoms after absorbing light. The color electrons emit depend on their kinetic energy and available places they can travel, a tiny bit similar to how things change color as they get hotter, but more extreme and general. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.198|172.70.114.198]]
: I'm pretty sure lighting strikes are white. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 20:58, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

It may refer to the Greek etymology of the word "electron". Originally it meant amber, a yellow gem. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.118.146|172.68.118.146]] 23:20, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
:But amber isn't yellow - it's... amber. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.222|172.70.85.222]] 10:40, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

I can't do formatting, I'm new. Sorry! {{unsigned|No Idea If There's A Character Limit LMAO}}

To me, this is 1000% building on the idea of debating the colors of school subjects. I've added a bit of explanation to the text about it. I used my own color associations & reasons (science = green, history = red) as an example, and I'm sure people will disagree with me. Leave your color/subject associations in a reply to this comment, could be a fun little debate! (also, English = blue)
[[User:Zman350x|Zman350x]] ([[User talk:Zman350x|talk]]) 23:50, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
: SocStud is yellow, Math is red, Science is green?, ELA is gray, French is blue, and orange is my least favorite subject out of the rest. I have gotten into many arguments with my friends.
:[[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.157|172.70.230.157]] 00:10, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
:: Science = Green (green flask bubbling)
:: Social Studies = Blue (blue and green globe, green is taking)
:: Math = Red (math is reliable, red is a strong color so i associate it with reliability)

:: English = Yellow (all other colors are taken)
:: Also electrons are blue
::[[User:Iffy|Iffy]] ([[User talk:Iffy|talk]]) 23:53, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
::: Hm! I've never heard of school subjects having any assigned colors; much less any debate about it! If we're identifying them by the folders they're kept in, my favorite subject was Ferrari & my least favorite was Porsche.
::: [[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 04:41, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
:::: I don't recall colour-coded (UK) schoolbooks, in particular (except the "red pirate, green pirate, blue pirate, etc" stories for young kids, the red pirate like only rubies, the green one emeralds, the blue probably sapphires, and had clothing/etc that matched, naturally), but I had (have still, somewhere!) a collection of Usborne Encyclopaedias at home with a veritable rainbow of colours. Mathematics was yellow, I think, Computers a shade of blue, one of the Red or off-Red (slightly pinker, but still deep red) might have been Physics (had geophysics in it, IIRC), I think History was a light-green. I'm sure I never had the whole set, but I had enough to arrange in as close to Richard Of York order as I felt most content to do, when on the bookshelf.
::::: Obviously there ''were'' colours involved with the school stuff. I'm sure different levels of SPMG (Scottish Primary Maths Group?) workbooks were colour-coded, perhaps more for the benefit of the teacher, though the later {{w|School Mathematics Project|SMP}} ones were probably more just identified as "13a", "5b", etc, to work through various sub-subjects and the increasingly advanced techniques thereof, perhaps coloured with highlights only to not be boring black-on-white monochrome covers.
::::: And there's so many other colour-classifications that I instituted for myself, over the years, showing just how useful a hue can be to represent and differentiate a class of something, such as various 3M-style "post-it"-like arrow stickers stuck into the pages of a book for quick reference to all instances of one particular thing or another. For which I suppose I'm grateful to not having any notable form of colour-blindness, to limit my options. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.114|172.70.91.114]] 08:20, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
:::: Personally, I've always thought that English is red, Math is blue, Sciences are green, History is yellow, and "personal events" are orange.
::::::This is completely BS. This is about the diagrams used for drawing atoms where colors are used for different elementary particles. And Randall clearly explains that they do not have real color. And the jokes that people still have feelings for what colors are chosen based on the conventions used where people first learned about atoms. Have removed the color on subjects completely as it has nothing to do with this comic. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:43, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
::::::PS you cannot be more than 100% on anything :-D --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:46, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

I believe this comic was made in response to a book talk Randall did in Seattle, where this question was actually asked to him in person! If you want to hear it yourself, someone recorded the talk here: https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/xjuc4i/a_recording_and_autotranscript_of_randalls_latest/
[[Special:Contributions/172.71.142.6|172.71.142.6]] 00:45, 7 February 2023 (UTC) A random new user
: Was it the dorky randall with red hair or the photogenic one with brown hair and blue eyes or am I going wildly mad? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.198|172.70.114.198]] 00:51, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Am I crazy, I always thought of electrons as blue to contrast with the protons which are red[[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.89|172.70.211.89]] 04:47, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
:You're all crazy! Elections are 2817.9am & protons are 1.5am. "Yellow" is over 557,000,000,000am! Maybe you've all got your displays' color gamut set too low? ;S
:[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 09:18, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
::I have also seen protons as red and neutons as white and electron as blue in the diagrams I remember. Never yellow electrons. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:43, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
:::I'm not entirely sure about proton and electrons, but neutrons were black. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 20:58, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

"This comic appears to "elevate" that discussion to the college level." - considering that the students are considerably smaller than the teacher (notice the heads), I seriously doubt this is meant to be set in a college classroom - high school at most, IMHO. Also, "One common debate among schoolchildren is over the "color" of various subjects. Because of the brightly colored folders commonly used to separate subjects in the binder of a young student, the students tend to associate those colors with the subject." - well, not in any school I ever attended, nor with any school class I've ever worked with. I'd be inclined to dispute that this is at all common. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.46.85|172.70.46.85]]
: I agree that this is probably not supposed to be college-level, but the color-subject coordination is definitely real (albeit not a very common topic of debate). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.38|162.158.90.38]] 08:01, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
::I find it hard to believe Randall is referencing colors of school subjects without alluding to them in any way; to the contrary, I feel fairly certain he's directly referencing the various colors assigned to electrons, protons, quarks, etc, in diagrammatic illustrations of atomic structure. I think the whole first paragraph is way off base (though interesting tangentially).
::[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 09:18, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
:::I agree with all above here and have corrected the explanation to school class and pupils and diagram colors removing school subject color completely! --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:43, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
::::Was it also worth removing the synesthesia bit? Entirely unrelated to school-subject organisation-by-colour that I also think was an {{w|Red herring|incarnadine ''clupea harengus''}}, but very possibly relevent to "but I happen think it's obvious that <concept> is a <hue> thing!"... For consideration, or as a side-note, whether or not you restore that possible reference. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.203|172.71.242.203]] 10:42, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Electrons are blue, right? In all my textbooks (Germany) electrons are blue. Is this a generally accepted addition? [[Special:Contributions/198.41.242.166|198.41.242.166]] 07:13, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
: I stopped the explanation saying that electrons were (by implication, ''solely'') yellow. If green is used for a nucleon (neutron? red being proton?), they might choose blue for an electron, as contrast. Or black dot or white (black-outlined) small circle to contrast with whatever the nucleons are with their much bigger circles clumped in the middle.
: But, given other regular colour-conventions, I could imagine yellow as a popular 'electron' colour. Either in its own right (influencing the choices given to the other things depicted) or as the main obviously remaining option (the other things having been decided upon first). Horses for courses. And I can imagine cultural/national differences (e.g. what colours your household wiring was set up as, at least before EU standardisation but then red and black still exists in the mindset, despite blue and brown, or whatever it might have been) if not localised 'linguistic puns' to make some choices more 'obvious' than others. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.114|172.70.91.114]] 08:20, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
::Indeed, yellow is sometimes indicative of electrical hazard, as opposed to red for flame... So many ways to draw associations!
::[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 09:18, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
:::Yes blue electrons, red protons and white neutrons are probably common on Europe, it is in Denmark. I'm a physicist and word with radioactive isotopes and teach about them. My drawings are red protons and white neutrons and blue electrons. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:43, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

I don’t know what Ms. Lenhart is talking about. Electrons are blue, protons are red, and neutrons are definitely grey. Not sure how to sign my comment tho. Oh well {{unsigned ip|172.70.174.115|13:00, 7 February 2023}}
:(You sign your comments with a string of <code><nowiki>~~~~</nowiki></code> (as suggested by the comment at the top of many a comic-discussion page, when you start to edit it)... or you wait for someone else to do what I just did for you, but that's more effort than the four tildes on your part.)
:For what it's worth, I'm mostly with you. Red and grey/dark-grey/black in the centre, as you say. Light blue (or yer actual electric blue?) or (bluish?) white electrons. Depends what colour-pallettes are available to the illustrator/modeller, I imagine, and what else needs a distinct colour alongside the basic trio (e.g. yellow fission/fusion "sparky-flame energy things" or general labelling stuff). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.246|162.158.158.246]] 13:15, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
::I did some data collection on image searches for atom diagrams, and yes, the defacto color standard is protons red, neutrons grey (less commonly yellow or green), and electrons blue.
::I like this because it gives opposing colors to the opposing positive and negative charges, (the same color choices as the traditional magnet north and south ends, likely not coincidentally,) and a neutral color to the uncharged neutron.
::Which makes me think that when Lenhart says "electrons are yellow" she does not mean in the diagram sense, but rather in the sense "if you make an electron big enough to see, it is yellow".
::[[User:SomeDee|SomeDee]] ([[User talk:SomeDee|talk]]) 16:58, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
:electrons are green. y'all are trippin [[Special:Contributions/172.71.154.159|172.71.154.159]] 17:27, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
::definitely green. Have none of you ever used a transmission electron microscope? Or an oscilloscope? Green shine everywhere! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.95.22|162.158.95.22]] 09:01, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

I made a survey for this: https://forms.gle/Pu5mkEtBZPUZ6dbb8
[[User:RamenChef|RamenChef]] ([[User talk:RamenChef|talk]]) 18:03, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Electrons are yellow, protons are red, and neutrons are gray. End of discussion.
:What about roses and violets? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.172|172.71.242.172]] 10:49, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

{{w|Quark_(dairy_product)|Quark}} is white, or off-white.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.96|172.70.85.96]] 10:47, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
:I find this comic puzzling. Virtually all colors we see are due to electrons (transitions between different states in atoms, molecules, and solids), so saying they are "too small to interact with visible light" is quite incorrect. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.130|172.69.134.130]] 18:48, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
::Yeah. They totally interact with visible light. But only with light of specific frequency matching the energy difference between some electron and free higher orbit it can move to. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 19:00, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

((Snipped))
: What language is this? This is and English site, so please write in English. Google Translate detects it as Hungarian, but leaves almost all of the words untranslated. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.38|162.158.90.38]] 04:31, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
:: It's just a past troll. Who has several times said they've finished trolling, or promised to finish trolling in a given instance if only someone would include some word or other in their next edit. (Spoiler: they never stopped, so we just have to deal with it and carry on.)
:: The 'language' was worked out (it's a conlang that's a mix of actual non-English root words and 'cod Latin'-type transforms, essentially) but I'm not wasting braincells on its inanity or going to make it a 'mainstream thing'. They do worse things to vandalise the site, but that doesn't mean that the above can be left unchallenged as relatively benign.
:: My advice is to ignore it (or revert it away, if nobody else does that quickly enough). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.222|172.70.162.222]] 09:14, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
::What is a conlang and what is cod Latin? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.34.45|172.68.34.45]] 15:12, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Talk:2731: K-Means Clustering

2023-01-30T23:03:16Z

172.68.34.45: /* editorial */ new section

{{w|K-means_clustering|The wikipedia article}} does not clear anything up [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.228|162.158.78.228]] 13:53, 30 January 2023 (UTC)Bumpf

The "Convergence of ''k''-means" animation is reasonably distinctive for a two-dimensional case, showing at least the motivation for the problem . Could it be attached here? [[User:Mia yun Ruse|Mia yun Ruse]] ([[User talk:Mia yun Ruse|talk]]) 14:08, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, this is probably the least explanatory Explain xkcd I've read in the past 3 years. Still a lot of heavy math. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.95|162.158.186.95]] 16:50, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

This feels very similar to the joke "There are 10 types of people: those who know binary and those who don't." Except that the real joke here is that Ponytail doesn't have anything meaningful to justify her version. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.206.150|172.70.206.150]] 17:45, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Current explanation claims that since every human is unique, clusters can only be formed by ignoring some traits. This seems false; a cluster could depend on multiple traits, so there's no obvious limit to the number of traits that could be used when forming clusters. Perhaps they mean that clusters can only be formed by combining non-identical points into the same cluster, but that's literally the entire purpose of clustering and applies to all clustering ever, so it seems like both a trivial observation and a non-sequitur. Am I missing something? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.90|172.70.211.90]] 19:54, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
:Yes, the joke about why there are 8 billion clusters mentioned in the title text. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.220|162.158.78.220]] 20:47, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
::No, I did not miss that. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.136|172.70.211.136]] 22:53, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
:While it's true that clusters can depend on multiple traits, a cluster that depends on ALL human traits at once (or a very large number of them) is useless in practice. A useful cluster depends on a relatively limited number of traits. I think that's where the "ignoring" comes in. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.146.208|162.158.146.208]] 22:30, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
::Supposing that's true, that would apply to any sample of humans. The "since all humans are unique" part would still be false, and the comment still wouldn't make sense in context as a response to the specific scenario of 8 billion humans. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.136|172.70.211.136]] 22:53, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

== editorial ==

This sentence clause appears to contain a typo: ", and indicate on a graph '''of''' the data has two distinct populations".
It might be clearer as ", and indicate on a graph '''if''' the data has two distinct populations".

2716: Game Night Ordering

2022-12-29T01:23:26Z

172.68.34.45:

{{comic
| number = 2716
| date = December 26, 2022
| title = Game Night Ordering
| image = game_night_ordering_2x.png
| imagesize = 293x471px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = One good trick, if you get called on a fake service, is to build a working version of it and mention it again the next week.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BORED FOOD.NET DRIVER BETWEEN DELIVERIES. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic is poking fun at the proliferation of apps and internet services such as for [https://builtin.com/consumer-tech/food-delivery-companies food delivery] and [https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/banking/best-ways-to-send-money money transfer]. The characters are discussing which to use during an evening of tabletop gaming. The group has a running competition to see who can mention fake apps or services without being called out. The idea being that since there are so many, it is difficult to remember which are real.

[[Cueball]] mentions three food delivery services, {{w|Grubhub}}, {{w|DoorDash}}, and Food.net, and [[Ponytail]] asks him to reimburse her using {{w|Venmo}}, {{w|PayPal}}, or Yahoo Cash. Cueball expresses skepticism about Yahoo Cash, after which Ponytail admits it's a fake service and is thus obligated to pay for Cueball's meal. (Incidentally, Yahoo does provide a money transfer service to facilitate private party gambling on {{w|fantasy sports}}, called [https://sports.yahoo.com/wallet/dailyfantasy/referafriend/ Yahoo Fantasy Wallet], but it uses PayPal.) Food.net, which Cueball mentioned without being called out, is not a real service; https://food.net exists but is "not available for use," and is not related to food.

Based on Ponytail's offer, if someone is correctly called out then they apparently must pay for the player who caught them, but what happens when a player isn't caught (e.g. when Cueball mentioned Food.net) isn't clear. The rules might be similar to variants of the card game often known as "{{w|Cheat (game)|Cheat}}," in which a successful bluff merely allows play to continue on until someone is caught bluffing or incorrectly accuses another player.

The title text offers a tip for winning the competition after being called out for mentioning a fake service: building a working version of it and then mentioning it again the next week. While it could be possible to prototype a user interface and possibly use it to perform food deliveries with a very limited number of drivers in a small area, or provide a front end interface to an existing money transfer service with strong API support, building a full-fledged viable service for either in a week is humorously beyond the reach of typical gamers. However, one reader did set up an online bank on a LAN when he was eleven years old, and had something pseudo-usable within a few days; said reader could probably so in one day now, and with far fewer SQL injection vulnerabilities.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[Cueball, Megan, and Ponytail are sitting at a table to order food. Cueball is on his phone, and Ponytail, sitting opposite, on her laptop.]
:Cueball: What should we use to order? Grubhub? DoorDash? Food.net?
:Ponytail: I'll do Grubhub; you can send me money. Do you do Venmo? Paypal? Yahoo Cash?
:Cueball: Yahoo Cash ''has'' to be fake.
:Ponytail: Yes. Dang. I'll get your share.
:[Caption below the panel:]
:Our game night has an ongoing competition to see who can mention the most fake apps and services without getting called on it.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Games]]