explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1574: Trouble for Science

2015-09-07T16:41:51Z

173.245.56.155:

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)

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
he
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)

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).

Talk:104: Find You

2015-02-16T02:10:42Z

173.245.56.155: discussing terminator b/w afterimages

Why does the image show upside down?
[[User:Erenan|Erenan]] ([[User talk:Erenan|talk]]) 12:32, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
:No idea, I tried to upload a new version that shows right-side up on my computer and it is still upside down. --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 12:52, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
::I've corrected it now. Had to resave the file and then upload again. --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 12:54, 1 August 2012 (EDT)
Could this comic refer back to 98: Fall Apart? [[Special:Contributions/24.121.109.157|24.121.109.157]] 03:34, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

There is nothing in the text to indicate that the loved one is a 'she' (or a 'he' for that matter) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.225.128|108.162.225.128]] 02:09, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

:True, but the reason the sought after person is presumed to be a woman is because it is implied that Cueball is motivated by love and xkcd's typical depiction of romantic love is heterosexual. It is, of course, certainly possible that the person sought after is loved in a non-romantic sense, but romantic love seemed most plausible to me. This was the reason for the sentence "It is not explicitly made clear whether the loved one in question is a woman with whom he is in love, a family member, or a relation of some other kind, but presumably the loved one is either his girlfriend or wife." The use of "she" throughout the rest of the explanation was done from this perspective. That is, under the assumption that it was the most plausible explanation. [[User:Erenan|Erenan]] ([[User talk:Erenan|talk]]) 16:53, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
--[[User:Rbs|Rbs]] ([[User talk:Rbs|talk]]) 16:10, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
For me the cave architecture is strange, and personnaly reminds me of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie: Conan. Which can make sense for Cueball and the comic in this context. --[[User:Rbs|Rbs]] ([[User talk:Rbs|talk]]) 16:10, 19 December 2014 (UTC)rbs
:funny you should mention that. i tried to put in an explanation awhile back that the caves looked like one of those black-and-white afterimage things, like this one--http://img.izismile.com/img/img4/20111111/1000/mind_blowing_afterimages_optical_illusions_07.gif--except with the terminator instead of jesus, but i guess it got taken down.

User talk:Rbs

2015-02-16T02:00:18Z

173.245.56.155: discussing terminator b/w afterimages

funny you should mention that. i tried to put in an explanation awhile back that the caves looked like one of those black-and-white afterimage things, like this one--http://img.izismile.com/img/img4/20111111/1000/mind_blowing_afterimages_optical_illusions_07.gif--except with the terminator instead of jesus, but i guess it got taken down.

1214: Geoguessr

2014-11-09T19:12:50Z

173.245.56.155: /* Explanation */ reference to Connoisseur

{{comic
| number = 1214
| date = May 20, 2013
| title = Geoguessr
| image = geoguessr.png
| titletext = I'm not sure if you can get Epcot, but my friend just got LegoLand. He guessed California but it was the one in Denmark. Meanwhile, I'm rapidly becoming a connoisseur of unmarked dirt roads over flat, barren landscapes.
}}

==Explanation==
[//Geoguessr.com Geoguessr] is a game in which the player is given a location in {{w|Google Street View}} and asked to guess precisely where in the world they are, by clicking on a map of the world, based only on the 360 degree view in the Street View display.

Cueball is upset because he keeps making his guesses based on landmarks and his guesses end up being wrong because the landmark he based his guess off of was actually a replica of the real one.

Of course, from a statistical perspective, this makes sense: For every famous object, there are countless replicas, and the vast majority of famous objects (except a few notable works of art) exist in only one place in the world. Take the {{w|Statue of Liberty}}, for instance, which has {{w|Replicas of the Statue of Liberty|hundreds of replicas all over the planet}}.

However, as the title text alludes to, you're far more likely to find a dirt road than to find anything recognizable, since Google Street View maps roads more than anything else (hence its name). Becoming a connoisseur of such a mundane thing is a reference to [[915: Connoisseur]].

Anyone who's ever played with Geoguessr knows, also, that seemingly helpful clues can sometimes be useless. For instance, if you recognize Russian words on a sign, the nation of Russia actually encompasses an enormous area, so unless you can recognize a specific region, there's no obvious place to guess where you can hope to get high points. Unlike somewhere like England, where guessing London is guaranteed to put you within reasonable distance from a global perspective. {{w|Legoland}} is a good example of this: If you can't tell if you're in Denmark or California, it's not like you can just guess halfway between and do well.

==Transcript==
:Cueball: This one's easy; There's the Parthenon. Athens.
: *''CLICK''*
:Cueball: What!? Why the hell is there a Parthenon in ''Nashville''?
: *''CLICK''*
:Cueball: OK, I'm ''clearly'' in Germany.
: *''CLICK''*
:Cueball: Dammit, Germany Pavilion at Epcot.
:My scores in Geoguessr would be higher if people quit building replicas of everything.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]