Main Page
Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all 2330 xkcd comics,
and only 30
(1%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!
Latest comic
| Universal Rating Scale |
 Title text: There are plenty of finer gradations. I got 'critically endangered/extinct in the wild' on my exam, although the curve bumped it all the way up to 'venti.' |
Explanation
|
This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by an OFFENDED NUMBER NINE. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. |
In this comic, Randall has blended many traditional rating scales to create a "universal rating scale". Unfortunately, the mixing of these scales creates a scale that is impossible to use. Alternatively, it can be perceived as a way of comparing the different scales, for instance to answer a question like "Is it worse to get a 2 or an F?"
- Scale of zero to ten (but with an 11, because people often add that to exaggerate - see up to eleven about the meme)
- 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11. The number 9 is omitted.
- Competitive scores, such as in the Olympics (ordinarily from 0.0 to 10.0, perfect)
- 10.0
- Scale of agreement
- strongly disagree, disagree, agree, strongly agree
- School grades (there are also B, C, D, and others with + or -)
- F, A, A+
- S - Schools in Japan may use the S grading, from the Japanese shū (秀), meaning excellent. Many video games also use S grading, and some (such as Beat Saber) use SS as a rank above (though SS is not shown in the webcomic.)
- Restaurant or entertainment ratings
- 1 star, 2 stars, 3 stars, 4 stars
- Conservation status (this is only a subset of the nine groups in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species)
- extinct, critical, endangered, least concern
- Starbucks brand beverage sizes (there is also short and trenta)
- tall, grande, venti
- MPAA age-appropriate film ratings took effect November 1, 1968 with G, M (now PG), R (not shown in comic) and X (now NC-17)
- G, PG (as of February 11, 1972, replaced GP), PG-13 (introduced July 1, 1984), NC-17 (introduced September 1990, replaced X)
- ESRB age-appropriate ratings for video games (there is also EC for early childhood, E for everyone, E10+ for Everyone 10+, M for Mature, and AO for Adults Only)
- T for teen
- Happiness emojis
- Frowny face, neutral face, smiley face
- Coin grades
- F, G, VG, UNC for fine, good, very good, uncirculated
- Hurricane/cyclone strengths, Saffir–Simpson scale (ordinarily categorized from category 1 to category 5)
- Category 5
- Tornado intensities, enhanced Fujita scale (ordinarily categorized from 0 to 5)
- EF-5
- Credit (and other) ratings
- A, AA, AAA
Transcript
|
|
This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks. |
- [Caption above the frame:]
- Universal Rating Scale
- [A vertical scale, with 45 gradations, labeled]
- 0
- 1
- Strongly Disagree
- F
- [star] ☆
- Extinct
- Tall
- 2
- G
- Critical
- [frowny face] ☹
- 3
- endangered
- [two stars] ☆☆
- PG
- Disagree
- VG
- 4
- Grande
- 5
- PG-13
- [neutral face] 😐
- 6
- T for Teen
- 7
- [three stars] ☆☆☆
- Agree
- Venti
- 8
- Least Concern
- [smiley face] ☺
- A
- Strongly Agree
- Category 5
- EF-5
- NC-17
- UNC
- AA
- [four stars] ☆☆☆☆
- A+
- S
- AAA
- 10
- 10.0
- 11
Is this out of date? .
New here?
Last 7 days (Top 10) |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to sign up for an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for comics, characters, themes and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd web comic, it should be here.
- If you're new to wiki editing, see the explain xkcd:Editor FAQ for a specific guidance to this Wiki and the more general help on how to edit wiki pages. There's also a handy wikicode cheatsheet.
- Discussion about the wiki itself happens at the Community portal.
- You can browse the comics from List of all comics or by navigating the category tree at Category:Comics.
- There are incomplete explanations listed here. Feel free to help out by expanding them!
- We sell advertising space to pay for our server costs. To learn more, go here.
Rules
Don't be a jerk.
There are a lot of comics that don't have set-in-stone explanations; feel free to put multiple interpretations in the wiki page for each comic.
If you want to talk about a specific comic, use its discussion page.
Please only submit material directly related to (and helping everyone better understand) xkcd... and of course only submit material that can legally be posted (and freely edited). Off-topic or other inappropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users who repeatedly post such content will be blocked.
If you need assistance from an admin, post a message to the Admin requests board.
