explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2918: Tick Marks

2024-04-15T00:37:14Z

Lyricalcarpenter: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2918
| date = April 10, 2024
| title = Tick Marks
| image = tick_marks_2x.png
| imagesize = 292x276px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = If you're really savvy, you can hide an entire set of illicit transactions by timing them to draw what looks like a graph inset.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT WORKING BEHIND A GRAPH - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic provides the reader with a suggestion on how to "conceal activity" — specifically, in this case, activity happening after what should have been the deadline for completing it — that is going to be graphed over time, by timing bursts of activity to coincide with the ticks on the time axis. This is assuming that the scale of the time axis is known, that the ticks are placed inside the axis line, and that the "bottom" of the graph is aligned with the line on which the ticks are drawn, rather than the "peak" of the largest tick.

Theoretically, the graphed "activity" would be concealed behind the ticks, meaning anyone reading the graph would perceive activity as having ceased at the deadline, even though it had continued in time-axis-tick-sized bursts afterwards.

The title continues with tips on how to make illicit transactions by integrating them in such a manner that makes them appear to be (or merge into) a graph inset, which would contain relevant information to the graph. For this to work convincingly, it would probably have to be a {{w|scatter plot}} or similar, rather than a {{w|bar chart}} or {{w|line chart}}, upon which carefully crafted datapoints could 'draw' a credible facsimile of [[688: Self-Description|graphical meta-features]]. This reference is timely because the comic came out during tax season, a period when many{{Citation needed}} Americans need to find an explanation for illicit transactions or sources of revenue.

Variations (or possibly inversions) of pretending that actual data is part of the graphical framing device have also been previously seen in the [[1815: Flag|form]] of [[2528: Flag Map Sabotage|flags]].

==Transcript==
:[A graph with two axes is shown. Each axis has tick marks with every fourth mark a bit longer than those in between. The Y-axis is labeled with text rotated 90 degrees clockwise. There is no label on the X-axis. The graph is a jagged curve with three clear peaks; the area beneath the curve is shaded in light gray. After the third and highest peak the curve drops to zero. At the point of decline, a dotted line goes up to a label above the last peak. To the right of this dotted line, the X-axis and the ticks on it are clearly thicker than the axis and the ticks to the left.]
:Y-axis: Activity
:Label: Deadline

:[Caption beneath the panel:]
:If you need to conceal activity, try timing it to hide behind the tick marks on the graph axis.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Line graphs]]

2857: Rebuttals

2023-11-21T00:01:54Z

Lyricalcarpenter: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2857
| date = November 20, 2023
| title = Rebuttals
| image = rebuttals_2x.png
| imagesize = 328x437px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The mainstream dogma sparked a wave of dogmatic revisionism, and this revisionist mainstream dogmatism has now given way to a more rematic mainvisionist dogstream.
}}

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

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

:Cueball: It's become conventional wisdom that the backlash against the prevailing consensus led researchers to ignore inconvenient new evidence. However...

:[Caption below the panel:]
:In a field that's been around for a while, it can be hard to figure out how many levels of rebuttal deep you are.

{{comic discussion}}

1779: 2017

2022-03-15T02:48:35Z

Lyricalcarpenter: reverted previous edit

<noinclude>:''This page refers to the comic named "2017". For comic #2017, see [[2017: Stargazing 2]].''</noinclude>
{{comic
| number = 1779
| date = December 30, 2016
| title = 2017
| image = 2017.png
| titletext = Things are looking good for the eclipse--Nate Silver says Earth will almost definitely still have a moon in August.
}}

==Explanation==
In this [[:Category:New Year|New Year comic]], [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] share some of their (or [[Randall|Randall's]]) thoughts about the ending 2016 and the new year 2017 (hence the title). 2016 was a year which many people eagerly awaited the end of because of its increased turmoil (terrorist attacks, controversial political events in numerous countries including the election of {{w|Donald Trump}} for president in the {{w|United States}} and the United Kingdom {{w|2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum|voting for Brexit}}) as well as the deaths of an unusually large number of well-known and beloved celebrities (several of these died in the first few days after Christmas).

Instead of simply condemning 2016 as a terrible year and expecting 2017 to be significantly better, Megan observes that much of what made 2016 bad is the effect that it will have upon future years rather than the actual events themselves (for instance, a divisive {{w|United States presidential election, 2016|U.S. presidential election}} has caused significant controversy in 2016, but President Donald Trump actually took office and began to affect the world as President in 2017). Megan specifically states that ''2016 was bad was because of the things it sent us into 2017 without.'' As it is known that Randall is a {{w|Hillary Clinton}} supporter (as shown in the [[1756: I'm With Her]] comic), an additional reading of that line could be that we are headed into 2017 "without" a Hillary Clinton presidency. It can also refer to the many {{w|2016#Deaths|dead celebrities}} passing in 2016, (at least three famous musicians/actors so recent that they died after Christmas Eve), as we would be without all of them in 2017.

Cueball claims that they should still have hope for the future, but Megan states that people had claimed that many of the bad things that did happen in 2016, could not happen (for instance Trump and Brexit). And as these things did happen, she foresees even worse events occurring in 2017, that we did not even think would be possible.

However, Randall also offers a glimpse of hope in the last few panels when Cueball observes that, just as all of the bad things in 2016 were unexpected, good things in 2017 that are unexpected could also happen, which should make us less sure what good may come of 2017. As such, he argues that we should hold on to our hope even though things seem difficult right now.

As the conversation unfolds, Megan and Cueball encounter an uprooted tree and cross it like a balance beam. This is a visual metaphor; the dead tree represents the end of the old year, while the crossing represents the transition into the new year. This is similar to the magical toboggan from {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} that serves as a metaphor for their conversations, mentioned in [[529: Sledding Discussion]] and [[409: Electric Skateboard (Double Comic)]].

In the last panel Cueball mentioned that 2017 will also have a cool {{w|solar eclipse|eclipse}}, going through the central parts of North America. This may also serve as a reminder that the Earth continues to spin on despite all of the human turmoil going on on its surface. This is literally true, as the eclipse Randall is excited about is caused by the orbits of three celestial bodies lining up just right (the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon).

Cueball then also notes that 2017 is a {{w|prime number}} and states that prime-numbered years (prime years) have always been good to him. He thus illustrates the positive attitude that people can choose to take in order to see all that which is good and to spread a little bit more cheerfulness, and Megan is ready to take this positive view, although she may not totally buy in to it. This could also be a pun referencing the saying "being in his prime years".

The title text is a reference to {{w|Nate Silver}} who is well-known (in the United States) as an election polling analyst on {{w|FiveThirtyEight}}. His model allowed for a higher chance that Donald Trump would win the presidency compared to other similar models — though the fact that he still favored a Clinton win may be contributing to getting humor from the idea that he may be "wrong" again, and the Moon could possibly vanish in 2017, making the year definitely worse than 2016. (Earth and Moon are so close in the space order of things, that any event affecting Moon orbit seriously will almost certainly end our civilization too.) This is accentuated by the qualifier "almost definitely", which is of humorously low confidence for presenting a fact as certain as the Moon not somehow disappearing within the next year.

In the background of the first few panels of this comic, we see a fallen tree, but a sapling growing in its place. This may be a subtle message by Randall that there is still hope, and that things will be alright in the end.

Randall previously mentioned his excitement for the {{w|Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017|2017 eclipse}} exactly three years earlier in [[1302: Year in Review]], where Megan complains about not having seen an aurora during 2013, and she really hopes they don't cancel the 2017 eclipse. So this comic is the second time Randall has expressed concern that he will miss the eclipse. Leading up to and after the eclipse Randall released six more comics on the subject: [[1868: Eclipse Flights]], [[1876: Eclipse Searches]], [[1877: Eclipse Science]], [[1878: Earth Orbital Diagram]], [[1879: Eclipse Birds]], and [[1880: Eclipse Review]].

There have been three previous New Year's comics with only the year used as the title: [[998: 2012]] in 2012, [[1311: 2014]] in 2014 and [[1624: 2016]] in 2016. This is the first odd-numbered year (and thus of course the first prime year) using only the new year as the title.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan walking outdoors]
:Cueball: Can't wait for this stupid year to be over.

:[The two approach a fallen tree]
:Megan: I can. This year made the future scarier. So much of why 2016 was bad was because of the things it sent us into 2017 without.

:[Megan has hopped up onto the tree trunk and begins to walk along it]
:Cueball: You gotta have hope, though.
:Megan: You say that, but you also said all this awful stuff couldn't happen, and it did. You're as clueless as the rest of us.

:[Cueball also walks along the tree trunk as Megan stops and turns to look at him]
:Cueball: Well, if we're wrong about which bad things can happen, it's got to make us at least a ''little'' less sure about which good things can't.

:[Closeup of Megan hopping down from the tree]
:Megan: I guess.

:[A distant shot of Megan and Cueball walking along again]
:Cueball: Plus, 2017 has a cool eclipse in it.
:Megan: Ooh, yeah!
:Cueball: And it's prime. Prime years have always been good for me.
:Megan: Sure, I'll take it.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:New Year]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Nate Silver]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|2017]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Number theory]]
[[Category:Total Solar Eclipse 2017]]

1779: 2017

2022-03-15T02:47:21Z

Lyricalcarpenter: added wikipedia link to 2017 eclipse

<noinclude>:''This page refers to the comic named "2017". For comic #2017, see [[2017: Stargazing 2]].''</noinclude>
{{comic
| number = 1779
| date = December 30, 2016
| title = 2017
| image = 2017.png
| titletext = Things are looking good for the eclipse--Nate Silver says Earth will almost definitely still have a moon in August.
}}

==Explanation==
In this [[:Category:New Year|New Year comic]], [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] share some of their (or [[Randall|Randall's]]) thoughts about the ending 2016 and the new year 2017 (hence the title). 2016 was a year which many people eagerly awaited the end of because of its increased turmoil (terrorist attacks, controversial political events in numerous countries including the election of {{w|Donald Trump}} for president in the {{w|United States}} and the United Kingdom {{w|2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum|voting for Brexit}}) as well as the deaths of an unusually large number of well-known and beloved celebrities (several of these died in the first few days after Christmas).

Instead of simply condemning 2016 as a terrible year and expecting 2017 to be significantly better, Megan observes that much of what made 2016 bad is the effect that it will have upon future years rather than the actual events themselves (for instance, a divisive {{w|United States presidential election, 2016|U.S. presidential election}} has caused significant controversy in 2016, but President Donald Trump actually took office and began to affect the world as President in 2017). Megan specifically states that ''2016 was bad was because of the things it sent us into 2017 without.'' As it is known that Randall is a {{w|Hillary Clinton}} supporter (as shown in the [[1756: I'm With Her]] comic), an additional reading of that line could be that we are headed into 2017 "without" a Hillary Clinton presidency. It can also refer to the many {{w|2016#Deaths|dead celebrities}} passing in 2016, (at least three famous musicians/actors so recent that they died after Christmas Eve), as we would be without all of them in 2017.

Cueball claims that they should still have hope for the future, but Megan states that people had claimed that many of the bad things that did happen in 2016, could not happen (for instance Trump and Brexit). And as these things did happen, she foresees even worse events occurring in 2017, that we did not even think would be possible.

However, Randall also offers a glimpse of hope in the last few panels when Cueball observes that, just as all of the bad things in 2016 were unexpected, good things in 2017 that are unexpected could also happen, which should make us less sure what good may come of 2017. As such, he argues that we should hold on to our hope even though things seem difficult right now.

As the conversation unfolds, Megan and Cueball encounter an uprooted tree and cross it like a balance beam. This is a visual metaphor; the dead tree represents the end of the old year, while the crossing represents the transition into the new year. This is similar to the magical toboggan from {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} that serves as a metaphor for their conversations, mentioned in [[529: Sledding Discussion]] and [[409: Electric Skateboard (Double Comic)]].

In the last panel Cueball mentioned that 2017 will also have a {{w|Solar Eclipse of August 21, 2017|cool eclipse}}, going through the central parts of North America. This may also serve as a reminder that the Earth continues to spin on despite all of the human turmoil going on on its surface. This is literally true, as the eclipse Randall is excited about is caused by the orbits of three celestial bodies lining up just right (the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon).

Cueball then also notes that 2017 is a {{w|prime number}} and states that prime-numbered years (prime years) have always been good to him. He thus illustrates the positive attitude that people can choose to take in order to see all that which is good and to spread a little bit more cheerfulness, and Megan is ready to take this positive view, although she may not totally buy in to it. This could also be a pun referencing the saying "being in his prime years".

The title text is a reference to {{w|Nate Silver}} who is well-known (in the United States) as an election polling analyst on {{w|FiveThirtyEight}}. His model allowed for a higher chance that Donald Trump would win the presidency compared to other similar models — though the fact that he still favored a Clinton win may be contributing to getting humor from the idea that he may be "wrong" again, and the Moon could possibly vanish in 2017, making the year definitely worse than 2016. (Earth and Moon are so close in the space order of things, that any event affecting Moon orbit seriously will almost certainly end our civilization too.) This is accentuated by the qualifier "almost definitely", which is of humorously low confidence for presenting a fact as certain as the Moon not somehow disappearing within the next year.

In the background of the first few panels of this comic, we see a fallen tree, but a sapling growing in its place. This may be a subtle message by Randall that there is still hope, and that things will be alright in the end.

Randall previously mentioned his excitement for the {{w|Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017|2017 eclipse}} exactly three years earlier in [[1302: Year in Review]], where Megan complains about not having seen an aurora during 2013, and she really hopes they don't cancel the 2017 eclipse. So this comic is the second time Randall has expressed concern that he will miss the eclipse. Leading up to and after the eclipse Randall released six more comics on the subject: [[1868: Eclipse Flights]], [[1876: Eclipse Searches]], [[1877: Eclipse Science]], [[1878: Earth Orbital Diagram]], [[1879: Eclipse Birds]], and [[1880: Eclipse Review]].

There have been three previous New Year's comics with only the year used as the title: [[998: 2012]] in 2012, [[1311: 2014]] in 2014 and [[1624: 2016]] in 2016. This is the first odd-numbered year (and thus of course the first prime year) using only the new year as the title.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan walking outdoors]
:Cueball: Can't wait for this stupid year to be over.

:[The two approach a fallen tree]
:Megan: I can. This year made the future scarier. So much of why 2016 was bad was because of the things it sent us into 2017 without.

:[Megan has hopped up onto the tree trunk and begins to walk along it]
:Cueball: You gotta have hope, though.
:Megan: You say that, but you also said all this awful stuff couldn't happen, and it did. You're as clueless as the rest of us.

:[Cueball also walks along the tree trunk as Megan stops and turns to look at him]
:Cueball: Well, if we're wrong about which bad things can happen, it's got to make us at least a ''little'' less sure about which good things can't.

:[Closeup of Megan hopping down from the tree]
:Megan: I guess.

:[A distant shot of Megan and Cueball walking along again]
:Cueball: Plus, 2017 has a cool eclipse in it.
:Megan: Ooh, yeah!
:Cueball: And it's prime. Prime years have always been good for me.
:Megan: Sure, I'll take it.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:New Year]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Nate Silver]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|2017]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Number theory]]
[[Category:Total Solar Eclipse 2017]]

Talk:395: Morning

2021-10-16T04:15:52Z

Lyricalcarpenter:

I always thought she was seeing airplanes, satellites, planets, or stars. --[[Special:Contributions/67.243.62.50|67.243.62.50]] 03:01, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

"Seeing dead pixels in the sky" seems like a rehash of an important quote in some work. Any ideas on what that work is? [[Special:Contributions/24.104.10.45|24.104.10.45]] 06:16, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

:It's like that quote from CJ in the first season of West Wing: We can all be better teachers.
:It sounds so deep you think they must have borrowed it from somewhere. But no, it's original. Kudos to Randall. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.223|108.162.219.223]] 21:37, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
:It's reminiscent of the opening sentence of Neuromancer: The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.174|173.245.55.174]] 04:28, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Btw, if anyone is curious, life's resolution is approximately [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+inch+%2F+1+planck+length 1.572×10^33 DPI] [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.213|108.162.212.213]] 16:29, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

:And its framerate is, ignoring relativistic effects, roughly [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+second+%2F+1+planck+time 1.8549×10^43 FPS]. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.106.10|162.158.106.10]] 17:19, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

:: I wonder how big the GPU is [[Special:Contributions/172.69.208.136|172.69.208.136]] 16:17, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

::: The memory would be your real constraint, along with network latency if it's a distributed computing system. (Hey, what if that's the cause of relativistic effects? A node having more data than usual to process, so it slowly lags behind other nodes...) As for the speed of the system, as long as it's turing complete and has sufficient storage for the data, it doesn't matter how fast each frame is processed from the viewpoint of the simulation's Users, the people inside the sim would still experience time as normal. Just ask a Dwarf Fortress player if their dwarves ever perceive the effects of FPS Death. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.194|108.162.246.194]] 12:28, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

:::: Do you think it's a good idea for us all start rolling loads of dice to increase the latency of the simulation? It'd be nice to screw with whatever's running the thing. But would macroscopic "randomness" even affect a system that powerful? It's something to think about. [[User:Lyricalcarpenter|Lyricalcarpenter]] ([[User talk:Lyricalcarpenter|talk]]) 04:15, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

IMO, the unspoken big picture is that during a prairie winter you can get "white out" conditions when an overcast sky matches the color of snow cover. This eliminates all shadows and you can walk face first into a snow drift without seeing it. The whole world looks like dead pixels. {{unsigned ip|108.162.216.87}}

"It is likely what she is seeing is a star or other stellar object." I'm not sure this bit fits the context of the image. It is supposed to be dead pixels, and stellar objects don't often pop out of no where (unless an infinite improbability drive is involved). [[User:Kirdneh|Kirdneh]] ([[User talk:Kirdneh|talk]]) 21:08, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

It may just be me, but I thought the dead pixels she is seeing form the words "And seeing dead pixels in the sky.", making the comic self-referential in a typical xkcd way. Does anyone agree with me? [[User:Richmond tudor|Richmond tudor]] ([[User talk:Richmond tudor|talk]]) 06:35, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Has nobody else noticed the several square pixels depicted in the sky? Zoom in, Gramps! [[Special:Contributions/199.27.129.11|199.27.129.11]] 02:41, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Am I the only one that doesn't actually think the pixels are there just to annoy the reader like it says in the explanation? It seems like they're there because the text says so. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.51|108.162.216.51]] 17:46, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I didn't notice the red and green dots until this page "explained" it. Until then, I conjectured that the "dead pixels" were snowflakes that had fallen from the sky to the ground. The trees look like evergreens, which made me think of winter. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.6|162.158.63.6]] 21:24, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

403: Convincing Pickup Line

2021-05-16T22:40:53Z

Lyricalcarpenter: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 403
| date = March 31, 2008
| title = Convincing Pickup Line
| image = convincing pickup line.png
| titletext = Check it out; I've had sex with someone who's had sex with someone who's written a paper with Paul Erdős!
}}

==Explanation==
A {{w|graph (mathematics)|graph}} is a mathematical object consisting of '''nodes''' connected by lines called '''edges'''. The nodes could represent for example people, and the edges could represent a connection from having slept together. Now, Megan has such a graph. Arguably, a {{w|symmetric graph|graph that is symmetric}} is nicer than a regular one, which is why Megan suggests that they should sleep together.

The title text is a small-world joke on the concept of an {{w|Erdős number}}. {{w|Paul Erdős}} was a Hungarian mathematician renowned for his eccentricity and productivity. He holds the world record for the number of published math papers, as well as for the number of collaborative papers. A person's Erdős number is the "collaborative distance" between the person and Erdős. Paul Erdős's Erdős number is 0 by definition. All of his 511 collaborators have the Erdős number of 1; anyone (excluding Erdős) who has collaborated on a mathematical or scientific paper with any of those collaborators has an Erdős number of 2, and so on. Thus, if you have written a paper with someone who's written a paper with someone who's written a paper with Paul Erdős, your Erdős number is 3. If you know a mathematician or are a mathematician, you can calculate their or your Erdős number [http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/collaborationDistance.html here].

This may also be a reference to Chapter 4 of {{w|Candide}}, wherein Pangloss tells the protagonist of the genealogy of his syphilis. He received the disease from Paquette, who acquired it from a {{w|Franciscans|Franciscan}}, as so on until the lineage starts with one of the adventurers of {{w|Christopher Columbus}}.

In [[599: Apocalypse]], Cueball actually manages to write a paper with zombie Erdős, thus having a Erdős number of 1.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan sit at a small table in a cafe. Megan holds up a graph.]
:Megan: We're a terrible match. But if we sleep together, it'll make the local hookup network a symmetric graph.
:Cueball: I can't argue with that.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Romance]]
[[Category:Sex]]

537: Ducklings

2021-04-21T04:29:32Z

Lyricalcarpenter: typo

{{comic
| number = 537
| date = January 30, 2009
| title = Ducklings
| image = ducklings.png
| titletext = DUCKLOOP'D?
}}

==Explanation==
The comic shows an elaborate plan. The mother and her ducklings will always walk in a line. The ducklings will either follow their mother, or the duckling in front of them.

[[Cueball]] scares the mother duck, so she starts running away, her children following her in a line. Then [[Megan]] snatches the mother duck, leaving the first duckling to start following the last duckling, causing the ducklings to walk in a loop. Hence the caption at the end - "Operation: Duckling Loop." However, eventually the ducklings will probably realize something has gone wrong, and break the loop.

This behavior occurs naturally in real life with creatures that are less smart than ducks, such as sheep and ants (the phenomenon is called an {{w|ant mill}}).

The title text refers to a meme called "Duckrolled", where one would post a link to [http://www.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS9ZqD3N_DuAvMnN9Pl5k4Km6HCdCFXCLs3Gi4uJhge1ytfG3_qUgNU4To a picture of a duck on wheels.] It became much more famous in its later incarnation as the {{w|Rickroll}}.

==Transcript==
:[A mother duck and her six ducklings.]
:[Cueball is in front of the line of ducks, and Megan is behind.]
:Megan: Ready?
:Cueball: Ready.

:[The duck and ducklings move.]

:Cueball: ROAR! BOO!

:[The mother duck is frightened, and turns back. Her six children follow.]

:[Megan snatches the mother duck with a yoink.]
:Duck: QUACK!

:[The six ducklings are now trapped in a circle of sorts.]

:OPERATION: DUCKLING LOOP

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