Editing Talk:2861: X Value

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transcript and short explanation added <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">[[User:SomeoneIGuess|someone, i guess]]<sup>([[User talk:SomeoneIGuess|talk i guess]]&#124;[[Special:Contributions/SomeoneIGuess|le edit list]])</sup></span>  18:47, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Is there an easter egg here? Is 4.1083 a significant constant in some field?
[[Special:Contributions/172.71.154.91|172.71.154.91]] 19:00, 29 November 2023 (UTC) 
:Dunno...but when I Googled it, it came up with a picture of a motorcycle I used to own - same vintage, same colour, same non-original aftermarket panniers - which was a little strange. Anybody else return any results centred around long-since-departed vehicles? 

:Or not? [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 19:31, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

:Googling for it showed me... a picture of this very xkcd. It's recursive? [[User:Ralfoide|Ralfoide]] ([[User talk:Ralfoide|talk]]) 20:46, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

:Nothing interesting on Wolfram Alpha either https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=4.1083 [[User:Ruffy314|Ruffy314]] ([[User talk:Ruffy314|talk]]) 16:26, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

https://www.der-postillon.com/2012/08/mathemuffel-erleichtert-wert-von-x-ein.html [[Special:Contributions/172.68.110.148|172.68.110.148]] 20:42, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
: This is in german, could you maybe give a translation at least? <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">[[User:SomeoneIGuess|someone, i guess]]<sup>([[User talk:SomeoneIGuess|talk i guess]]&#124;[[Special:Contributions/SomeoneIGuess|le edit list]])</sup></span>  20:45, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
:: Here is the English article: https://www.the-postillon.com/2017/04/value-of-x.html [[Special:Contributions/172.68.110.179|172.68.110.179]] 06:36, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
:: Basically the same joke, x being set to 5 in this case. The website is a satirical online newspaper. --[[User:Coconut Galaxy|Coconut Galaxy]] ([[User talk:Coconut Galaxy|talk]]) 06:12, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

The "narrowing down" of n might be a reference to a combinatorics problem Ron Graham was solving, managing to narrow down the dimensions of the hypercube with a certain property to be more than 6 and less than... Well, Graham's Number.
[[Special:Contributions/172.71.122.209|172.71.122.209]] 22:12, 29 November 2023 (UTC)jamieth

:Even that is accomplishment. Really, narrowing number down from infinite set to finite one is the biggest narrowing you can do. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 23:29, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
:: More than narrowing from one infinite set to a smaller infinite set?[[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.93|172.70.230.93]] 08:35, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

"In string theory the number of flux vacua is commonly thought to be roughly '''10^500''',[4] but could be 10^272,000[5] or higher." --  [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory_landscape#Compactified_Calabi%E2%80%93Yau_manifolds String theory landscape#Compactified Calabi–Yau manifolds] [[User:Abclop99|Abclop99]] ([[User talk:Abclop99|talk]]) 22:23, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

As of today, the value of Twitter (which some may call X for unknown reasons) is of 41.09 Billion USD. This might be the joke?
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.129.16|162.158.129.16]] 22:50, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

The variable 'n' is often used in computer programs to be a counter for some activity that is repeated 'n' times. 'n' may be user input or it might be a calculated value like the number of items in a list. So the code would be something like, for the integer 'i' starting at 1 and iterating up to 'n' number of times in whatever computer language is being used. In this case, 'n' would be limited to the maximum value of the specific integer type in that computer language on that machine. [[User:Rtanenbaum|Rtanenbaum]] ([[User talk:Rtanenbaum|talk]]) 03:34, 30 November 2023 (UTC)::

A result that the math community has been waiting for for a long long time! [[Special:Contributions/172.71.103.135|172.71.103.135]] 08:16, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

What is wrong with comic 899? I can access other pages, but 899 gives error. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 16:50, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
: ...that comic works for me. By all means I can think of, but especially through either [[899: Number Line]], [[899]] or [[Number Line]] (the latter two being redirect-pages to the first, of course).
: Now ''occasionally'' (more frequently than I'd like), the server comes back with a message that it can't (currently, in that instance) give you the page, for reasons of its own. More rarely (but not unknown), Cloudflare with tell you that the whole site just isn't responding. But (wait and) try again and it usually works. (Unless you've just filled in a CAPTCHA, in submitting a page edit, in which case it's likely to tell you that the CAPTCHA is wrong/not ticked/completed it, so you get told off and have to try again.)
: If it's not such a transient problem, for you, could you let us know in what context you're trying to get there and failing? 
: PS. "New comments should be added at the bottom." Answer: Because it's confusing. Question: Why ''shouldn't'' we put new things in front of old things? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.199|172.71.178.199]] 19:22, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
: Make sure that you have your Math module settings to PNG, not MathML. This creates an error in pages with Math modules as mentioned in the FAQ <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'">[[User:SomeoneIGuess|someone, i guess]]<sup>([[User talk:SomeoneIGuess|talk i guess]]&#124;[[Special:Contributions/SomeoneIGuess|le edit list]])</sup></span>  19:45, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

: I've been having the same problem for the last 2 days: comic 899 won't load from any link or even a navigation button from an adjacent comic.  I can access the talk page, but trying to get to comic 899 gives this result:
 <nowiki>MediaWiki internal error.
:: I'm betting that comic 899 is the n'th comic and that broke math so the comic could not be displayed until someone from the math department at MIT stepped in and incremented n.

Original exception: [ZWloWSNSV_QR0qrq5MDPrwAAABA] 2023-12-01 05:00:09: Fatal exception of type "MWException"

Exception caught inside exception handler.

Set $wgShowExceptionDetails = true; at the bottom of LocalSettings.php to show detailed debugging information.</nowiki>
:I'm logged in with my math preference set to MathML.  Ah, I just changed to PNG and the page loads fine.  Thank you.  (I guess it's time to review the FAQ and see what else I'm doing wrong!)  [[User:Orion205|Orion205]] ([[User talk:Orion205|talk]]) 05:07, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Careful research has also definitively determined that the best random number is 7. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.27.95|172.68.27.95]] 20:37, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Well, it wasn't [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2861:_X_Value&curid=27020&diff=330879&oldid=330499 my edit that was reverted], but it ''is'' a rather old and 'popular' joke in the field. (Of course, it's "N", not "n" in "P=NP". I had considered changing it, myself, to be more correct, but, it would have meant diluting the intended humour.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.131|162.158.33.131]] 18:44, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

== Big O Notation? ==

I suspect the title text about n is a reference to big o notation  where the function is only meaningful when n is large, but you might want to choose a function with "Bad Big-O performance" if you know in advance that n is below k (usually 2 or 3 or less than 10).
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/842242/big-o-when-the-value-of-n-gets-very-small, thus ruling that n > 8 would ensure that the Big-O growth would predict the most performant function. {{unsigned|Jh6p|21:51, 1 December 2023}}

==Value of n==
: the value of n has been narrowed down to somewhere between 8 and 10^500

Reminds me the problem from Ramsey theory which inspired the creation of the {{w|Graham's number}}. The current lower limit is 13 (an improvement from the original lower limit of 6). The upper limit is a number whose decimal representation is too large to fit in the observable universe. - [[User:Mike Rosoft|Mike Rosoft]] ([[User talk:Mike Rosoft|talk]]) 07:24, 13 January 2024 (UTC)