explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

218: Nintendo Surgeon

2016-11-28T21:13:53Z

173.245.52.112: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number =218
| date =February 2, 2007
| title =Nintendo Surgeon
| image =nintendo_surgeon.png
| titletext =Scary thought #138: Raptors coming down the waterslide behind me.
}}

==Explanation==
The {{w|Nintendo Entertainment System}}, released in North America in 1985, helped revitalize the video-game industry after the {{w|North American video game crash of 1983|video-game crash}} of 1983, with such games as the ''{{w|Super Mario Bros.}}'' series, ''{{w|The Legend of Zelda (game)|The Legend of Zelda}},'' the ''{{w|Mega Man}}'' series, ''{{w|Castlevania}},'' and ''{{w|Metroid (game)|Metroid}}'' helping it stand alone as what is still considered by many people today, the greatest video-game console of all time.

However, it was notorious for glitching games upon start-up, due in no small part to the unusual shape of the game console, which required one to open the door, push the game cartridge inside, push down to lock it in place, and push the power button. The console was deliberately designed this way so that it wouldn't look like a regular video-game console (and wouldn't be associated with the still-fresh stigma of the video-game crash only two years previous), but it caused no end of pain for people wanting to play the games. It would work fine for about two years, but after that "cartridge tilt" would become a problem as either the game's or the console's electric contacts could become misaligned.

A ubiquitous fix for this problem among gamers was to take the cartridge out, blow into it, and put it back inside, all to clean out any dust inside the cartridge that would make "cartridge tilt" worse and occur more frequently. This was not a recommended solution by Nintendo of America, and didn't always work, but it worked frequently enough to enter gamer culture, and even today, people who had the NES as children remember having to do that.

The NES was 22 years old as of the date this comic was written. Someone who was 10 years old when they got their Nintendo for Christmas could ''very well'' be old enough in 2007 to have attained their doctorate degree, and so this comic hearkens back to the aforementioned cartridge fix by suggesting that a heart surgeon might try that on a real-life heart patient. And like the introduction states, that ''is'' a scary thought.

The title text is one of many xkcd references to the terrifying ''[[velociraptor|Velociraptor]]'' predator from the dinosaur movie ''{{w|Jurassic Park}}.''

==Transcript==
:Scary Thought #137: The NES came out over two decades ago. Those kids are all grown-ups now.
:[Two surgeons are in an operating room, leaning over a patient.]
:First Surgeon: He's going into cardiac arrest. Stand by for defibrillation.
:Second Surgeon: Wait. First let's try taking out the heart, blowing into the ventricles, and putting it back in.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Velociraptors]]
[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Comics to make one feel old]]

Talk:1574: Trouble for Science

2015-09-08T13:39:40Z

173.245.52.112: ~~~~

Sentence case, or down style, is one method, preferred by many print and online publications and recommended by the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. The only two rules are the two rules mentioned above: Capitalize the first word and all proper nouns. Everything else is in lowercase. http://www.dailywritingtips.com/rules-for-capitalization-in-titles/ [[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.154|173.245.50.154]] 12:30, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

;Problems with the p-value as an indicator of significance

The p-value alone can never be an indicator of significance. However, it is still often used as the only indicator, because a full set of parameters (including sample size, test setup, etc.) can't easily be packed into a single number. There's a nice article in nature about this problem: [http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-statistical-errors-1.14700]
I can also recommend [http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800this story] about (ab-)using hacked p-values to get maximum publicity. I hope this helps :-) --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.183|141.101.105.183]] 12:41, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
:In this section, I really want to reword the p-valye explanation that "one can assume that the event observed 'exists'." Except where it's an event indirectly observed through a chained effect (unseeable gas molecules observed through brownian motion, unstable particles through detection of their decay particles, prehistoric meteorite impact through a geological/chemical fingerprint, etc) I think it should be more that "this (directly observed) event was directly linked to the presumed cause rather than spontaneous and random, at least w.r.t. the presumed cause being tested". But writing it better than I did just now. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.114|141.101.99.114]] 19:36, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

I think the joke is that these newspapers are talking about how bad science is, and yet they manage to come up with a stupid story about Bunsen burners, presumably being too scientifically illiterate to know the problem. [[User:Timband|Timband]] ([[User talk:Timband|talk]]) 12:55, 7 September 2015 (UTC) Although reading the other comments, it's a much better joke if the Bunsen Burner story is actually true, because that makes all of them about journalists not realising that they are highlighting their own ignorance. [[User:Timband|Timband]] ([[User talk:Timband|talk]]) 16:05, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

See [[Significant]] for another comic on p-values.--[[User:Henke37|Henke37]] ([[User talk:Henke37|talk]]) 14:22, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

;Controlled trials show Bunsen burners make things colder

Actually, I can easily imagine a way to use a Bunsen burner to make something colder. Involving an unlit Bunsen burner that has been placed in the freezer for a couple hours, for example. Nowhere in the headline is there any mention of a flame. --[[User:Svenman|Svenman]] ([[User talk:Svenman|talk]]) 12:59, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

:Actually, there was a (badly formatted and badly placed, probably therefore now removed) comment on the explanation page earlier which pointed out that feeding a Bunsen burner from a propane bottle will cause the pressure, and therefore the temperature, in the bottle to decrease. That is a lot less contrived than my original idea. --[[User:Svenman|Svenman]] ([[User talk:Svenman|talk]]) 13:37, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

::That was me. Trying to get my 2 cents in on my phone before I forgot. http://www.propane101.com/propaneregulatorfreezing.htm as an example. [[User:Mattiep|Mattiep]] ([[User talk:Mattiep|talk]]) 13:45, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

:Correct me if i'm wrong here, but doesn't burning flame from a Bunsen burner cause the temperatures of the flame and the target object to equalize? Sure in most cases that results in a temperature increase in the target object, but I don't see why that would be true in all high temperature cases. The comment about "reducing the rate of heat loss in 2000K+ temp objects" would only be true if the gas (assuming any atmosphere at all) surrounding the target object was cooler than the flame from the bunsen burner. This gets worse in a perfect vacuum. If a 5000K object was in a perfect vacuum and somebody set a lit bunsen burner (assuming the tip had an Oxygen source) to spray across the target object, then the Flame would get hotter as it touched the hotter object and the object would cool as the two temperatures attempted to equalize. No reduction of heat loss would happen. Can we remove the comment about "reducing the rate of heat loss in 2000K+ temp objects" ? [[User:Harodotus|Harodotus]] ([[User talk:Harodotus|talk]]) 22:20, 7 September 2015 (UTC).

::Found an article backing up my previous comment and lacking any objection for several hours, reveresed the note in the article.[http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2xr7dc/can_you_cool_an_object_hotter_than_fire_with_fire/] [[User:Harodotus|Harodotus]] ([[User talk:Harodotus|talk]]) 23:58, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

:Bunsen burners hasten the heat death of the universe, making things colder generally. Showing that in "controlled trials" seems like a challenge for a type 2 civilization, though. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.241.73|198.41.241.73]] 08:30, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I think the joke is in the wording of the headlines. The fact that a replication study fails to reproduce can be seen as a contradiction. Overfeeding rodents leads to fat rodents. This compromises their ability to function als animal (runway) models. I haven't figured out the other ones yet. But that's çause I'm dumb :-). Alva. {{unsigned ip|141.101.104.80}}

:It's way simpler than that - The joke is that people outside of sciences (with no understanding really of how to science) will report basically anything that sounds shocking or exciting, especially if it proves those nerdy, scary scientists wrong! So Randall gives us a bunch of possibly headlines that to a layman read like real, scary news about science, but to scientists this is stuff that is generally well known and understood. The last one is just taking it a step further for credulous news editors - They've been lying to us all this time! 13:33, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
::I think it's even simpler than that: the title is "Trouble for Science" and it shows a series of misleading headlines about misleading (i.e.: invalidated) scientific studies. The implication is "Trouble for Journalism".[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.87|173.245.54.87]] 14:21, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

:I agree. All of the titles are poorly written. All immunoassays are antibody-based, so saying many commercial antibody-based immunoassays are unreliable is redundant, implying they have no idea what an immunoassay is. Problems with the p-value as an indicator of significance implies that there is some significant error in the use of a tool to measure significance of error, which leads one to wonder how they figured that out. If you don't know what a p-test is, the title is paradoxical. The last title would make someone assume that the controlled trials are using turned on bunsen burners to make things colder, but could mean almost anything, such as a bunsen burner being turned off the entire time, or a bunsen burner placed inside of a freezer, or even that people consider using bunsen burners in an experiment makes the experiment cool (or sweet or groovy or whatever). {{unsigned ip|173.245.56.155}}

I generally agree, but would say if you DO know what a p-test is, the title is paradoxical. If you don't know what a p-test is, the title is meaningless. [[User:Miamiclay|Miamiclay]] ([[User talk:Miamiclay|talk]]) 07:05, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

This comic may be in reference to Monsanto's latest ailments.

Talk:1537: Types

2015-06-12T13:38:33Z

173.245.52.112: ~~~~

Relevant: WAT talk https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat

Are (6) and (7) about completing sequences?

If the sequence was [1, 2, 3, ?] we would expect the ? to be a placeholder for 4. So [1, 2, 3]+2 is wrong := FALSE. But [1, 2, 3]+4 is correct := TRUE.

"+2 appears to be applying a unary + to the number 2" : or it adds the number of the line, 10, to 2 => 12. Also, the eleventh line, "2+2" may add 2 to all the following 2, explaining line 12. (that theory is from a friend of mine) [[User:Seipas|Seipas]] ([[User talk:Seipas|talk]]) 12:17, 12 June 2015 (UTC)
: Also, for the lines 6 and 7, the operation "[1,2,3]+x" may add x to the set [1,2,3] and return true if the operation succeeded or false if not. Adding 2 to the set [1,2,3] returns false because 2 is already in [1,2,3]. [[User:Seipas|Seipas]] ([[User talk:Seipas|talk]]) 12:23, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Yellowish Blue: http://www.livescience.com/17948-red-green-blue-yellow-stunning-colors.html is NaN!

''"The ironic thing is that fractions with 2 in the nominator are not the kind of numbers that typically suffer from floating point impreciseness."''
- This is not technically correct. Should read "fractions with 'power of 2' in the '''de'''nominator. However, the 3/2 would cause precision errors.

Is there more to this comic, a fixed set of rules that can tie all the examples together, or does each line make its own joke independently? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.5|108.162.219.5]] 12:54, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

== "normally" ==

<blockquote>This would make sense if it was <code>[] + 2</code></blockquote>

It really wouldn't. Javascript returns <code>"2"</code> (god knows why) and Python gives an error. Don't really feel like testing many other languages, but I also think it's not really a logical assumption to make at all. Can't think of a reason for <code>[] + 2</code> to return <code>[2]</code>... ever. It ''might'' make a little bit of sense in Randall's oddly typed language, but not in any sane one. --[[User:TotempaaltJ|TotempaaltJ]] ([[User talk:TotempaaltJ|talk]]) 12:35, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

: Javascript first converts <code>[]</code> (the empty array) to the empty string (using the rule "stringify each element and join with a comma"), then treats the operation as <code>"" + 2</code>, which results in conversion of the other operand to string and then concatenation. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.97.214|141.101.97.214]] 12:46, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

line 4: asci code of N + 2 = asci code of P [[User:SirKitKat|sirKitKat]] ([[User talk:SirKitKat|talk]]) 13:07, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

My favourite xkcd in a while. =8o) Of the list I got a good laugh out of numbers 8 and 13. [[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 13:11, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

I think a lot of this is his joke about programming languages loving the number 4. 2 + "2" = "4", [1,2,3] + 4 = true, 2+2 = DONE, and the range one all seem to support this. Also reminds me of this: http://xkcd.com/221/