3104: Tukey

2025-06-19T11:03:25Z

2A0E:1D47:9098:3800:81D2:2EF2:1EF4:9D3: /* Explanation */ Add alternative year calculations.

{{comic
| number = 3104
| date = June 18, 2025
| title = Tukey
| image = tukey_2x.png
| imagesize = 392x276px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Numbers can be tricky. On the day of my 110th birthday, I'll be one day younger than John Tukey was on his.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created by THE IRONY OF SOMEONE NAMED TUKEY COINING THE "BIT" WHICH ONLY NEEDS TWO KEYS TO WRITE ALL THE VALUES OF. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

The comic depicts a quote by {{w|John W. Tukey}}, an American mathematician and statistician, from his paper called ''The Future of Data Analysis'',where he discusses the importance of facing uncertainty. Randall then gives Tukey's age as 110.000 years (that is, 110 years to three decimal places), a very precise answer to the question of "how old is Tukey?" However, when it comes to his birthday, arguably the right question in this context, he only gives the approximate answer of "sometime this week". Tukey was born on Wednesday, June 16, 1915, 110 years and 2 days before the release of this comic on Wednesday, June 18, 2025.

The title text states that Randall would be one day younger than Tukey would be on his 110th birthday. Tukey's 110th birthday (on Monday) marked 40,178 days since his birth. Randall's 110th birthday ([[1179: ISO 8601|2094-10-17]]) will occur 40,17'''7''' days after his birth, due to having only passed through {{w|Gregorian calendar|27 leap-days}} (the first in 1988, the last in 2092) instead of Tukey's 28 instances (from 1916 to 2024, inclusive).

There are multiple different definitions of the year, however. The one most applied to birthdays is "a whole year has passed when it's the same calendar day", but the usual scientific/mathematical value is the tropical year of 365.2422 days (the time between the same two equinoxes) which smears the leap day across four years (which might impact the last digit of the calculation), but also the sidereal year of 365.2564 days (the time it takes the sun to return to the same place in the sky). The difference between the tropical and sidereal calculations over 110 years is about 1.5 days, so for this alternative definition of the year, we get a different answer for which day is 110, but it still remains "this week". Tukey suggests we shouldn't get hung up on this.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Transcribed by an idiot. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

:[Text formatted as a block quote]

:"Far better an approximate answer to the ''right'' question, which is often vague, than an ''exact'' answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise."

:John W. Tukey
:''The Future of Data Analysis (1962)''

:Caption below the comic:
:Happy approximate birthday to John Tukey, author of my favorite statistics quote, who was born 110.000 years ago sometime this week.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Statistics]]

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3104: Tukey