explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1493: Meeting

2017-03-26T05:59:19Z

Mike13815: Removed VW beetle line. EXTREMELY unlikely to be true

{{comic
| number = 1493
| date = March 2, 2015
| title = Meeting
| image = meeting.png
| titletext = Here at CompanyName.website, our three main strengths are our web-facing chairs, our huge collection of white papers, and the fact that we physically cannot die.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Beret Guy]]'s business, as previously seen in [[1032: Networking]] and [[1293: Job Interview]], is going well, although it is unclear why. The common theme in these three comics is that Beret Guy misuses common business cliches. The following are examples and phrases that [[Randall]] is likely making a joke about:

*"If you're reading this, the webserver was installed correctly.™" When a web server is installed automatically (like Apache through a package manager), it typically comes with a minimal configuration meant to deliver a single page saying all is working fine. Usually, a company will then configure the web server to provide actual meaningful content. It appears that in this case Beret Guy's company kept the page as is, but also trademarked the sentence as the company's motto, and proudly displays it under the company logo.

*"CompanyName.website": Companies are usually given descriptive or evocative names; Beret Guy's company, meanwhile, has been given a generic placeholder name that explains nothing about the company or website except that it is a company with a website. Currently, almost every middle-sized company runs a website, so it doesn't mean Beret Guy's company is in the information technology business (but many elements are specifically parodying Google).

*"Welcome to a meeting!" The usual way to start a meeting is to welcome the participants by telling them in which meeting they are (e.g. "Welcome to the meeting on..."). Here, the complete lack of specifics in this sentence is an indication that the meeting has, in fact, no purpose at all, except to be just "A meeting". It could also mean that Beret Guy does not know the proper way to welcome people to a meeting.

*"I'm almost out of words so I'll keep this short." A common theme in the busy world of business is lack of time, so "I'm almost out of time" would be a valid reason for keeping a meeting short, rather than a finite quantity of words. Aside from the fiction movie {{w|A Thousand Words (film)|A Thousand Words}} or people taking a {{w|Vow of Silence}}, people usually don't have a particular quota on the number of words they have or can use. Beret Guy also seems to run out of words in the title text of [[1560: Bubblegum]].

*"Just wanna touch bases." Often business professions will contact a customer to "touch base," meaning to check in for a status update. The use of the plural "bases" suggests Beret Guy does not know what this means. This could also be a word play on the expression "Cover some bases".

*"Self-driving car project" Google has been working on {{w|self-driving cars}}, which usually shouldn't be lost track of and found by the police. The fact that it was launched "by accident" is concerning. It could mean the car was turned on by mistake and then left unattended, or perhaps that a driver of one of their cars fell asleep or otherwise stopped controlling the vehicle, but it is not clear because the accidental launch may refer to the project itself rather than the car. The involvement of the police may imply that the car crashed or otherwise obstructed traffic. That said, 90 miles before crash is a good result for a self-driving car, especially when you didn't even know you built a self-driving car. What's especially ironic is the implication that the employees were carpooling (sharing a single vehicle for their commute, for reasons of efficiency/economy) in the self-driving car, and yet this carpool activity ended with the car setting off with nobody in it at all. These types of car was the topic of the later comic [[1559: Driving]], maybe misusing one of Beret Guy's cars. Self-driving cars is a [[:Category:Self-driving cars|recurring topic]] on xkcd.

*"Sales, any luck figuring out who our customers are?" In the real world, when companies want to find out "who [their] customers are", they are talking about learning more about their existing customers (e.g. age groups, interests, genders) in order to more closely match these customers' needs, and to discover ways to attract more of them. Here, Beret Guy and [[Ponytail]] apparently use the phrase literally - they have no records of making any sales. A normal enterprise struggles to sell its products/services in order to get money. Getting cash from an unknown source would lead to serious troubles - failure to comply with tax code, suspicion of money laundering - but overall, most enterprises suffer the opposite problem: they try as hard as they can but don't get enough cash to be profitable (despite keeping precise information about where cash comes from).

*"Bug tracker" usually refers to systems for tracking discovery, analysis, and fixing of software bugs (errors and problems), not the physical location of insects.

*"Web-facing" (title text) usually refers to software or a server that is connected to the internet using a web interface. However, in this case the term is applied to chairs (Likely meaning they are placed in front of a computer with internet browsing capability).

*"White papers" (title text) are usually policy recommendations, but here Beret Guy is likely talking about actual (near-worthless) blank white pieces of paper.

*"Main strengths" (title text) typically refer to one's skills, but "we physically cannot die" may refer to the fact that incorporated companies are in a sense anthropomorphised — they're legally treated as "persons", with the ability to sue and be sued in civil courts; or, just as likely, that Beret Guy and his employees are literally immortal, in which case that would indeed be a great asset which could be used in a variety of ways, from things like making an unstoppable army (though they could still be captured or incapacitated) to investing for a long long time.

==Transcript==
:[Beret Guy is shown in silhouette. Above Beret Guy there is a black sign with white (and grey) text. Above this is his address to those in the meeting:]
:Beret Guy: Welcome to a meeting! I'm almost out of words, so I'll keep this short. Just wanna touch bases.
:[White text in the black sign (''.website'' in grey):]
:CompanyName.website
:''If you're reading this, the web''
:''server was installed correctly.™''

:[Beret Guy stands in front of an office chair and a table talking.]
:Beret Guy: First, a few updates. We've learned from the state police that the self-driving car project we launched by accident during this morning's carpool has come to an end about 90 miles outside of town. Very exciting!

:[Pony tail sits at the table.]
:Beret Guy [off-panel]: Profits are up. Sales, any luck figuring out who our customers are?
:Ponytail: Nope. Money keeps appearing, but we have no idea how or why.
:Beret Guy [off-panel]: Great!

:[Back to the situation from frame two.]
:Beret Guy: Oh, and one last thing—I saw a cool red beetle in the hall. Can someone add it to the bug tracker?
:[person off-panel]: Just did!
:Beret Guy: Thanks!

==Trivia==
*"CompanyName.website" is actually a domain name that was registered on 2014-11-20 and [http://companyname.website which redirects to xkcd.com]. Presumably, it is owned by Randall, for the same reason as in [[305]].

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Beret Guy's Business]]
[[Category:Self-driving cars]]

1643: Degrees

2016-02-18T15:42:02Z

Mike13815: /* Degrees Fahrenheit */ Removed irrelevant information to keep temperature range paragraph directly on-topic.

{{comic
| number = 1643
| date = February 15, 2016
| title = Degrees
| image = degrees.png
| titletext = "Radians Fahrenheit or radians Celsius?" "Uh, sorry, gotta go!"
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] is being asked by a friend for the {{w|temperature}}. While he is checking his smartphone for the weather, he begins pondering what unit he should use when answering the question. (See below for [[#Cueball's reasoning|Cueball's reasoning]]).

In the US (where Cueball and [[Randall]] are from), the {{w|Conversion of units of temperature|temperature scale}} used in daily life is {{w|Fahrenheit}}. However, {{w|Celsius}} is commonly used for science, even in the US. Most of the rest of the world also uses Celsius in daily life.

:'''The Celsius scale''' is from the {{w|metric system}}. Though this system has been officially sanctioned for use in the US since 1866, it is not frequently used in daily American life, although it is the preferred system for trade and commerce according to the {{w|Metric Conversion Act}} of 1975. The US remains the only industrialized country that has not adopted the metric system as its official system of measurement. The unit ''degree Celsius'' or °C is an accepted {{w|International System of Units#Derived units|derived unit}} from the {{w|International System of Units}} (SI units) used in science (which again is the modern form of the metric system). The SI unit of temperature is the {{w|Kelvin}}, but this temperature scale is linearly related to the Celsius scale, which is why Celsius can be derived from it.
:'''The Fahrenheit scale''' is from the {{w|United States customary units|US Customary system}}, also known internationally as the (British) {{w|Imperial units|Imperial system}}. The unit is ''degree Fahrenheit'' or °F, and the relation to the Celsius scale is not easy to find in a mental calculation. The relations are: [°F] = [°C]*9⁄5 + 32 or [°C] = ([°F] − 32)×5⁄9. (For this exact reason Randall has previously made a helpful table for these situations in [[526: Converting to Metric]]).

Cueball weighs up the benefits of both scales, but fails to find a solution he can live with, and since he feels he has to give his friend an answer now, he panics and gives the answer 0.173 {{w|radians}}.
:'''Radian''' is the standard unit of angular measure, used in many areas of mathematics. An angle's measurement in radians is numerically equal to the length of a corresponding arc of a {{w|unit circle}}. It has no units and is denoted with the superscript c, but more commonly rad, lest it be confused with {{w|Degree (angle)|angular degrees}}.
:'''Angular degrees''' is a system used to measure {{w|angles}} in {{w|geometry}}, and although it used the unit ° it has nothing to do with temperature gradations of whichever scale.

Thus, this answer is unhelpful and the joke is that traditionally both geometrical angles and temperature is measured in degrees, but there is not the slightest degree of correlation between the two.

The title text indicates that Cueball's friend still wants to know whether the answer is in radians Fahrenheit or radians Celsius, which, despite being a silly way to express temperature would actually enable the friend to get some meaning out of the reply. But this just takes Cueball back to the problem he failed to solve in the first place of choosing one scale above the other, so suddenly he has to go, and he runs off without ever clarifying what he meant. This result is probably because he is afraid of being a bad friend according to his very last point regarding Fahrenheit: ''Valuing unit standardization over being helpful possibly makes me a bad friend.''

The answer Cueball gives of 0.173 radians corresponds to a geometric angle 9.91° (0.173*360°/2π). If this were "radians Celsius" it would be 9.91 °C corresponding to 49.8 °F and if it were "radians Fahrenheit" it would be 9.91 °F corresponding to -12.3 °C. [http://boston.cbslocal.com/2016/02/13/new-england-freezing-temperatures-valentines-day-weekend/ Given the temperatures] in {{w|Massachusetts}} (where Randall lives) when this comic came out, the day after Valentines day 2016, Cueball was probably giving his answer in radians Fahrenheit.

=== Cueball's reasoning ===
==== Degrees Celsius ====

; International standard
: Degrees Celsius is derived unit in the SI system of units used to measure temperature in most countries today. Using the SI system would allow Cueball to be easily understood in most countries and is by far the most recognized system, but it is not the most commonly used in the United States, his actual location in the comic.
; Helps reduce America's weird isolationism
: The United States uses its own set of units, including degrees Fahrenheit, called the United States Customary system and similar but not equal to the Imperial system, in contrast to most of the rest of the world which uses the SI system. The US's system of units is therefore considered "weird" as it makes the US different from most of the world, but previous efforts to convert the US to the SI system have failed. Cueball evidently believes that by using SI units he will help to eventually convert the US to the SI system, bringing considerable trade and tourism benefits and reducing confusion when dealing with foreigners.
; Nice how "negative" means below freezing
: On the Celsius scale, the freezing point of water at standard atmospheric pressure (101.325 kilopascals) is very close to 0 °C, and any temperature below that is "below" the freezing point. The Fahrenheit scale uses different points of reference (using a water/ammonium chloride chemical reaction for the lower calibration, while the upper calibration is set such that water freezing and water boiling are 180 degrees apart), and as a result the freezing point of water is a less memorable 32 °F.
; Physics major loyalty
: Cueball is apparently a physics major, like Randall, and SI units are more commonly used for scientific work (as the Kelvin scale is sometimes used in advanced Physics), even in the US. By using the Celsius scale in casual conversation he would show his loyalty to the system used by actual physicists.
; Easier to spell
: "Celsius" is generally considered to be an easier word to spell than the German surname "Fahrenheit" (At least this is the case for Cueball, but not necessarily for those who more commonly use Fahrenheit than Celsius). In this case the word is being spoken and the point is not immediately relevant, but part of the joke is that Cueball is overthinking things and worrying about the general use of the word when an answer is needed in this specific case.
; We lost a Mars probe over this crap
: The {{w|Mars Climate Orbiter|Mars Climate Orbiter}} disintegrated in Mars' atmosphere because Lockheed used US Customary units instead of the contractually specified metric units. Note that this had nothing to do with temperature scales, but was the use of the unit pound-seconds where newton-seconds should have been used. This was a great and tragic loss for science in general, Mars exploration in particular, and thus also for Randall who has shown deep interest in any kind of space exploration, especially regarding Mars (more or less mentioning all Mars rovers in his comics so far).

==== Degrees Fahrenheit ====

; 0°F to 100°F good match for temperature range in which most humans live
: In the context of air temperature, 0 °F and 100 °F correspond to "just about as cold as it gets" and "just about as hot as it gets" in temperate zones, thereby making Fahrenheit a useful temperature scale for weather reporting where most people live. By contrast, in Celsius a range of common temperatures in temperate zones is -20 °C to 40 °C, which is a less intuitive range for those used to the Fahrenheit scale.
; Rounds more usefully (70's, 90's)
: An argument sometimes heard for the continued use of Fahrenheit temperatures is that each 10 degrees change is meaningful in how we feel the temperature. Thus, it is convenient to talk about the temperature being in the 70's today, or in the 90's, etc. Since the Celsius degrees are almost twice as large, a similar statement about the temperature being in the 20's or 30's is not as useful, unless more precision is added by using phrases like low 20's or high 30's. However, this seems likely to be more a matter of which scale you are used to using than anything inherent in one scale or the other.
; Unit-aware computing makes Imperial less annoying
: If you need to constantly convert between Imperial and SI measurements in your head, or even between different Imperial units (e.g., ounces and pounds), it gets annoying and is a strong argument for everyone using metric measurements all the time. But, when it is easy to get the temperature - or any other measurement - reported in whatever units you want just by selecting the units you want your computer to report, then the annoyance is minimized, and the arguments for why we should stop using a familiar scale are weakened. Note that Cueball is looking at his smart-phone to get the current temperature.
:As many Americans, Randall is confusing the {{w|United States customary units|United States customary system}} with the {{w|Imperial system}} used in most of the rest of the English speaking world. In both systems temperature is measured in degrees Fahrenheit.
; SI prefixes are less relevant for temperatures
: One of the nice things about SI measurements is how the same basic unit scales by factors of 10 with common prefixes - e.g., kilometer, millimeter, kilogram, milligram, etc. Imperial measurements don't have this feature - you don't talk about long distances as kiloinches or small weights as millipounds. But, we generally don't use multiple units for atmospheric temperature (millidegrees or kilodegrees), so this argument for using SI measurements for length, mass, volume, etc., isn't as applicable for temperature scales.
; Fahrenheit is likely more clear in this context
: Cueball apparently knows that the inquirer is most likely to assume the answer will be in degrees Fahrenheit, so giving the answer that way would be the least likely to be misinterpreted. If he surprisingly gives an answer in Celsius, without explicitly stating he is reporting the temperature in Celsius, then that could be confusing.
; Valuing unit standardization over being helpful possibly makes me a bad friend
: The final thing Cueball considers is to question why he would give an answer that attaches more value to promoting standardization of units when all his friend wants to know is whether it is cold or warm outside. Wouldn't it be more friendly to just answer the question the way his friend will find most convenient? This is probably the reason he ends up not giving any real answer, as giving the answer in Celsius would make him a bad friend. That giving the answer in radians will make him a weird friend might feel better...

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is looking at his smartphone while a friend calls to him from off-panel. Cueball is thinking as indicated with a thought bubble.]
:Off-screen voice: Hey, what's the temperature outside?
:Cueball (thinking): Should I give it in °F or °C?

:[Zoom in on Cueballs head with a list of reason to use Celsius above him:]
:Degrees Celsius
:• International standard
:• Helps reduce America's weird isolationism
:• Nice how "negative" means below freezing
:• Physics major loyalty
:• Easier to spell
:• We lost a Mars probe over this crap

:[Same view of Cueballs head, but wider frame to accommodate a broader a list of reason to use Fahrenheit:]
:Degrees Fahrenheit
:• 0°F to 100°F good match for temperature range in which most humans live
:• Rounds more usefully (70's, 90's)
:• Unit-aware computing makes imperial less annoying
:• SI prefixes are less relevant for temperatures
:• Fahrenheit is likely more clear in this context
:• Valuing unit standardization over being helpful possibly makes me a bad friend

:[Cueball is holding his smartphone down while thinking as indicated with another thought bubble floating at the top. He then speaks and gets a reply from his off-panel friend.]
:Cueball (thinking): Crap, gotta pick something. Uhh...
:Cueball: ...0.173 radians.
:Off-screen voice: I'll just go check myself

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Physics]]