Talk:2892: Banana Prices

Is it a linear extrapolation? Or does it only appear so because the Y axis is logarithmic? Inflation is logarithmic, since it's expressed in percentages. Barmar (talk) 17:04, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Well, the lines of extrapolation are (invoked as) linear, by dint of the height above the baseline being preconverted to a logarithmic function of the represented axial value. Rather than taking exponential-style extrapolation of data and 'happening' to linearise it through the subsequent transformation, it is almost certainly going to have been merely establishing some trend point(s) through which such an exponential would pass and using that to directly guide the linear plot that (on the converted scale) is the functionally equivalent result to doing it with every point. 172.71.178.77 17:26, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

OK, so... my reading of the comic after studying it for a while is that Randall is making a sophisticated meta-joke about unreliable precision and how easy it is to be fooled. He knows, of course, that this graph's "prediction" is completely arbitrary and is likely to be VERY wrong. If so, I think this comic is one of the most-layerd and subtle he's ever done. You have to know a lot about statistical best practices to see what he's really doing here. .. What's so interesting to me is him using the voice of the caption-writer -- usually good ol' reliable Randall -- to actually be the butt of the joke. ... If someone wants to claim that this is more sarcasm than "unreliable narrator," I guess that's a reasonable interpreation, but the use of the word "probably" in the caption makes me think we're supposed to take the caption-writer seriously. Laser813 (talk) 18:38, 9 February 2024 (UTC)