1930: Calendar Facts

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 22:45, 11 March 2025 by 172.68.211.98 (talk)
Jump to: navigation, search
Calendar of Meaningful Dates
In months other than September, the 11th is mentioned substantially less often than any other date. It's been that way since long before 9/11 and I have no idea why.
Title text: In months other than September, the 11th is mentioned substantially less often than any other date. It's been that way since long before 9/11 and I have no idea why.

    Explanation

    The calendar used in the comic is the standard Gregorian calendar of 2012 used by most of Western Civilization. The comic looks at the frequencies of which dates appear in English writings indexed in the Google Books Library Project, by using the Google Ngram Viewer (link).

    Some dates are more (or less) frequently mentioned because they have a special significance. Other dates have correlations for which there doesn't appear to be any obvious reasons. September 11th has also been the date of two significant battles in the War of 1812 (long before it gained notoriety from the 2001 terrorist attacks), particularly one where the British landed in George Washington's own plantation, which likely bolstered its search volume. Yet the significance of the globally significant terrorism incident probably accounts for most of the occurrences, since that time.

    The date mentioned in the sub-heading (October 17th) is Randall's birthday.

    The title text mystery is explained here. In summary, many occurrences of "11th" in the writings were actually misread by the Google Books Library Project's optical character recognition software and/or reCAPTCHA users, becoming one of these: IIth, Ilth, iith, lith, llth, 1lth, 1ith, l1th, nth.

    Date Significance

    The first of each month is generally more mentioned than others, perhaps because such dates are markers of a new month and may be used as landmark dates or deadlines. Similarly, the final day of each month is commonly a deadline day. Other dates have a less mundane significance, for example:

    Transcript

    Calendar of Meaningful Dates
    Each date's size represents how often it is referred to by name (e.g. "October 17th") in English-language books since 2000
    (Source: Google ngrams corpus)
    [A regular Gregorian calendar laid out in a grid, Sunday first, on a leap year, with some numbers larger or smaller than others. Significant outliers are mentioned in the explanation.]

    comment.png  Add comment      new topic.png  Create topic (use sparingly)     refresh discuss.png  Refresh 

    Discussion

    Shouldn't it be "libration" not "libation"? Pretty sure drinking has nothing to do with it. Also pretty sure this is a mistake and not a clever alteration. 162.158.62.57 16:41, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

    No, it's a clever alteration because "libration" is listed right above it. --Videblu (talk) 16:45, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
    That's just a mistake - he meant to write 'vibration'141.101.76.16 16:48, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
    'Vibration' wouldn't make any sense, 'libation' is at least humorous, I vote it was no mistake. 172.68.54.64 18:00, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
    You're right - I don't know what I could have been thinking...141.101.76.16 08:49, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

    I formatted the transcript into a bullet tree since I thought it was the closest equivalent you can get in plain text to the branching flowchart deal in the comic. I'm open to alternative suggestions. The biggest problem I encountered, and one I'd like to see resolved, is what to do in the case where two branching sections butt up against each other, e.g. winter/summer and solstice/Olympics. I used an arrow symbol ("→") on an in-between line just to separate the set of bullets, but if someone wants to change that, I'm up for it. Kenbellows (talk) 18:04, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

    I find the bullet tree legible for the last few long lines, but it's hard to follow a single path. I was thinking of using (option 1|option 2) syntax, but that would probably look messy too. 162.158.91.29 18:10, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
    I think indenting when lines diverge and un-indenting when they converge would make it look nice and be easy to follow. I'm willing to do the work if others agree. 162.158.74.9 23:58, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
    Could you do it? I don't see what it looks like. Is it similar to this? 162.158.88.68 06:16, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

    Random error noticed - the line connecting "International Date" and "Mason-Dixon" to "Line" is drawn in the wrong color. 162.158.75.136 18:57, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

    Isn't the point with this comic that there is at least one valid path for every included element? I don't think Randall intended it to be a factorial combination because as the explanation suggests, most would be wrong/absurd/silly. But why not instead try to find some invalid element when it can be included in any possible path from end to end? Toyota Truck Month or Shark Week might not happen next year, who knows? Can anyone find any element that has no valid path at all? If not, then maybe the main explanation should be updated to fit the model recommended here.Lunar7 (talk) 20:05, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

    I'm not sure there's any 'fact' that could be constructed that 'scientists are really worried' about. Unless it's something to do with Shark Week. Although having said that, it doesn't actually say that they're worried 'about it', so I guess you could append this to any otherwise true fact and still have something true, albeit non sequitous. 141.101.76.16 08:53, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

    I'm pretty sure the whole point of this comic was to be a "screw you" to the Explain XKCD crew. Way to roll with the punches. 172.68.174.16 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

    Generators

    PIBWEB online generator of Calendar 'facts' using this formula.

    http://calendarfact.com/ (https://github.com/mstratman/calendarfact)

    https://staab.github.io/xkcd-1930/

    Not sure who's responsible for this, but there seem to be a few errors. "Might (not happen/happen twice) this year" is missing "this year", and "the (harvest/super/blood) moon" is similarly missing "moon". Also, I see a part "happens at the same time every year" that I don't see in the comic. Are there any other additions; and is there a way to find them other than keep refreshing? -- Angel 18:40, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
    Checked the source; looks like "at the same time" replaces "at the wrong time". Also, some of the options are missing a "." between the main tree and the title text or at the end of the sentence. (And for some reason every time I go to edit this talk page, the wiki logs me out) -- 162.158.91.167 18:48, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
    The source is on github - you can add pull requests to fix errors (I'll take care of the aforementioned errors).

    Here's mine.

    http://www.hearn.to/calendar.html

    172.68.142.65


    Here's one I wrote on jsFiddle. Glad I'm not the only one who read this and immediately thought, "I must code this!" 172.68.34.64 21:29, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

    https://jsfiddle.net/qa290hss/3/


    Here's a GraphML gist that I knocked up:

    https://gist.github.com/GeoSpark/0c64cb85ca8927175892f43f23ba1bdb

    The only change I made was to "precession", "libration", etc by adding the word "the" in front because it reads better. At least to my British English sensibilities. YLMV.


    I tuned it into a twitter bot: http://twitter.com/xkcd_cal_facts. It’s built using Tracery and cheapbotsdonequick.com

    https://codepen.io/DouglasMeyer/full/YYqKzX/

    I made one too! https://jsfiddle.net/kr661rhy/

    Here's my python implementation (it ain't pretty, but then I'm not very good at python yet, either):

    https://github.com/aroaminggeek/xkcd-calendar-facts-python/

    And my Crystal implementation:

    https://github.com/aroaminggeek/xkcd-calendar-facts-crystal/

    As there are many generators isn't better to remove links to generators from the comic explanation and add a link to this section?

    Here is my implementation in Haskell:

    https://github.com/mwuttke97/xkcd1930 162.158.90.222 19:57, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

    I made a Python command and function;

    YehudaDe (talk) 08:43, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

    I wrote a command line tool in node.js. My code's pretty concise because it doesn't hard code all possible options for each "piece" but uses the "(choice|choice|choice)" syntax.

    I created a human-readable file format to represent structures like the one in the comic, then wrote a C program to parse those files, so now you can write your own calendar facts.

    Equinox

    I don't think this is the correct definition for equinox, the plane comprising the Earth orbit around the Sun is never perpendicular to the Earth's axis. During the equinox the sun rays arrive to the Earth perpendicular to the equator line, this would be better. 172.68.62.238 22:10, 18 December 2017 (UTC)CBM

    I agree with the comment above; the Earth's axis is always tilted 23 degrees from the plane of the orbit. There are times the North pole is tilted toward the Sun and times it is tilted away from the Sun. Twice a year (at the equinoxes) the tilt is perpendicular to the Sun. 108.162.221.239 22:47, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
    I've edited the descriptions - do they look better now? 162.158.126.28 00:32, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
    Daylight Saving Time

    Twice the description references locations that don't follow the common DST plan as 'other than the natural latitude would suggest'. The longitude would suggest a time zone, not the latitude. 108.162.221.239 22:47, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

    Arbitrary decision by Benjamin Franklin

    The electric charge on an electron is conventionally described as being negative. I was always taught that this was because of a more or less arbitrary decision made by Franklin. I suspect Mr Munroe is humorously conflating this with Franklin's connection to Daylight Saving Time.

    Favorite combinations

    My personal favorite: “Did you know that Toyota Truck Month happens at the wrong time every year because of a decree by the pope in the 1500s? Apparently it’s getting worse and no one knows why. While it may seem like trivia, it is now recognized as a major cause of World War 1. PotatoGod (talk) 02:06, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

    Did you know that the Blood Moon might happen twice this year because of a decree by the pope in the 1500s? Apparently there's a proposal to fix it, but it actually makes things worse. While it may seem like trivia, it is now recognized as a major cause of World War 1. (I suspect the WW1 line will feature in a lot of people's favorite combinations—it's just so random!) GreatWyrmGold (talk) 21:05, 19 April 2021 (UTC)


    Got this from the link to the fact generator, and I like that too, maybe because it is close to the one above, which I first saw now:

    Calendar Facts by xkcd
    Did you know that Shark Week drifts out of sync with the sun because of a decree by the pope in the 1500s?
    Apparently it's getting worse and no one knows why.
    While it may seem like trivia, it triggered the 2003 Northeast Blackout.

    Damn sharks and pope decree. --Kynde (talk) 10:08, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

    "Did you know that Shark Week might happen twice this year because of..." Sold. Don't care about the rest. 172.68.34.64 23:28, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

    Is no one going to mention that "Shark Week" sometimes is used as slang to refer to menstruation? That's what I thought of the moment I saw it, and since cycles are roughly every 28 days but can change length slowly to re-synchronize (with others or for various reasons) that might be another valid interpretation. 172.69.22.86 20:14, 31 December 2017 (UTC)Rowan


    What's incomplete in this explanation? Seems pretty exhaustive to me. Can't we remove the incomplete tag? Zetfr 15:09, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

    The explanation says the comic generates facts. But as most of them are false it should refer to them as factoids. 162.158.38.8 11:19, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

    I don't see it... it clearly says it "appears to be a generator of 156,000 facts [...], about calendars, most of which are false or have little meaning" with the word appears and the statement following right after, that most are false.--Lupo (talk) 13:03, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
    this is the same general pick-and-choose idea as the star wars spoiler one 172.70.126.211 15:15, 8 November 2021 (UTC)BUmpf
          comment.png  Add comment
    Retrieved from "https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1930:_Calendar_Facts&oldid=368686"