Difference between revisions of "1710: Walking Into Things"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Jump to: navigation, search
(Explanation)
Line 26: Line 26:
  
 
{{comic discussion}}
 
{{comic discussion}}
 +
 +
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

Revision as of 07:20, 22 July 2016

Walking Into Things
A childhood spent walking while reading books has prepared me unexpectedly well for today's world.
Title text: A childhood spent walking while reading books has prepared me unexpectedly well for today's world.

Explanation

Ambox notice.png This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Still not complete.
If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

Cueball comments on the rate of his walking into things while distracted by various stimuli, comparing it to a controlled study. Megan replies that the rate of the control group is also very high. In Cueball's metaphor, the "control group" would be his walking around without being distracted. Thus, Megan is essentially saying that Cueball is simply clumsy, and that his walking into things has little to do with whether he's looking at his phone. Despite her masking the insult behind metaphoric prose, Cueball clearly understands, taking a highly defensive stance.

At the time the comic was released, Pokémon Go has been rapidly gaining popularity, with many people raising concern about the dangers of walking around while staring at a phone screen.

Transcript

[Meagan and Cueball walk behind a stump of a tree while he holds a smartphone in his hand.]
Cueball: My life is basically a big controlled trial of whether I'm more likely to walk into something while looking at a book, my phone, or the sky.
[Zoom in to Megan and Cueball while they're still walking, no background is shown.]
[Megan and Cueball still walking.]
Megan: The weird thing is that the rate for the controll group is so high.
Cueball: Walking is hard, okay?


comment.png add a comment! ⋅ comment.png add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ Icons-mini-action refresh blue.gif refresh comments!

Discussion

'TFI a UFE? 108.162.237.245 04:58, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

I was wondering about this as well and googled it before i noticed that it's just the letters L and I that are not properly spaced. So UFE translates to "LIFE"... --- 11:33, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
Leam to kem (learn to kern) 141.101.98.58 15:45, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Frame 1: Cueball mentions three groups. I think he implies the study only has 3 groups. Is the control group "looking at the sky"? 199.27.133.109 05:37, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

There is no control group in the first panel. It's a controlled (or monitored) trial, with three different outcomes. The control group mentioned by Megan is all mankind except Cueball.--Dgbrt (talk) 07:33, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
I read that as sometimes Cueball doesn't do any of the three things while walking, and yet still walks into things. 141.101.98.58 15:47, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
The "control group" is a baseline for comparison, so it's a sample of trials which have "average" values of the experiment's variables. Since the trials are describing whether Cueball is more likely to walk into something when he's looking at one of three things, the control group would be a random sample of all of Cueball's walking. Megan's comment about the control group is a way of saying that if you consider all of Cueball's walking, whether he's looking at one of those three things or not, his "rate" of walking into things is surprisingly high.--CapnCurry (talk) 22:34, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps Randall meant "discovering new things" by "walking into things". I walk into more things when I don't have a phone with me.--162.158.150.228 19:48, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Does the word "rate" have a specific meaning in the context of controlled trials? If so, the explanation needs a summary of that meaning and a description of what the "rate of the control group" means in that context. Dansiman (talk) 21:17, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

No, "the rate for the control group" just refers to the rate at which Cueball walks into things in general, versus the rate at which he walks into things while A) Staring at the sky, B) Reading a book, or C) Looking at his phone. "Rate" has no special or unusual meaning in this phrase.

Unrelated: Survey question: How much time do you spend looking at your phone? circa 2076: "What is a phone?" cc2026: "My phone says 72%." cc2016: "Not much; Sometimes I just use my tablet." cc2006: "I guess I do text a lot." cc1976: "Looking at it? Do you have a video phone or something?" cc1876: "What is a phone?" 108.162.221.8 10:37, 27 July 2016 (UTC)


The clouds are drawn to look like icons of clouds, not actual clouds. This has some kind of cosmic significance. i suspect it means that the characters exist inside a virtual landscape. 108.162.222.84 05:20, 29 July 2016 (UTC)leon