2636: What If? 2 Countdown

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What If? 2 Countdown

Title text: If you don't end the 99 Bottles of Beer recursion at N=0 it just becomes The Other Song That Never Ends.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a BOT THAT IS WONDERING ABOUT THINGS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This comic takes the idea of Advent calendars, and takes it to the extreme. It uses rather absurd and/or obscure ways to measure the amount of time until Randall's new book What if? 2 is released, with esoteric units or esoteric numbers. And often both.

Days	Date	Units	Exact value	Explanation
83	Jun 22	πe millidecades	82.0304 days	π =~ 3.14159, e =~ 2.718, so πe is about 22.459. A millidecade is 1/1000 decade, or 1/100 year, or about 3.6525 days. Multiplying these results in 82.03 days.
82	Jun 23	7 megaseconds	81.0185 days	7,000,000 seconds
81	Jun 24	e lunar months	80.27247 days	A lunar month =~ 29.53059 days, e =~ 2.718
80	Jun 25	60 rotations of Foucault's pendulum in Paris	79.67 days	The Foucault's pendulum measures and/or prooves earth's rotation. Possibly a reference to the Bogdanow brothers who used pointless circumlocutions with the Foucalt pendulum as tech babble in their fake dissertation
79	Jun 26	8 milligenerations	78.84 days	A generation is in general 22-33 years, the mean is 27; so 8 * 0.001 (mili) * 365 (not accounting for leap years) * 27 =~ 78.84 days
78	Jun 27	777,777 dog minutes	77.16 days	A popular myth is that dogs age 7 times faster than humans, so 1 dog minute equals 1/7 human minutes.
77	Jun 28	7! episodes of Jeopardy! (skipping ads)	77 days	7!=7*6*…=5040 - The standard episode of Jeopardy is 22-26 minutes skipping ads - taking the lowest value you get 110880 minutes total which is the exact value needed.
76	Jun 29	5,000 repeats of 99 Bottles of Beer
75	Jun 30	5 baker's fortnights (15 days)	75 days	A baker's dozen is a dozen (12) plus 1 extra item. Randall has generalized this to adding 1 to any unit. A fortnight is 2 weeks, so a baker's fortnight is 15 days. 5x15 is 75 days.
74	Jul 1	√2 dog years	73.79 days
73	Jul 2	π millivics (1/1000th of Queen Victoria's reign)	72.966631 days	Queen Victoria ruled between 20 June 1837 and 22 January 1901 (23,226 days).
72	Jul 3	42 drives from NYC to LA (Google Maps estimate)	71.75 days	According to Google Maps, the drive from New York City to Los Angeles via I-80 E (2789 miles or 4489 km) takes 41 hours.
71	Jul 4	1,000 viewings of Groundhog Day	70.14 days	Using 101-minute run time.
70	Jul 5	100,000 minutes	69.44 days
69	Jul 6	1/10th of Martian year	68.70 Earth days	Martian sidereal and tropical years both round to 687.0 Earth days
68	Jul 7	1,234,567 sound-miles		The speed of sound in air depends on the temperature. 0 °C or 32 °F gives the value 331 m/s and the travel time of 69.4739214 days
67	Jul 8	2^π^e seconds	5,766,073 seconds = 66.7 days	2^(π^e)
66	Jul 9	2^16 beats (Swatch Internet Time)	65.536 days	.beat is equal to 1/1000 day.
65	Jul 10	1,000 ISS orbits
64	Jul 11	Five hundred twenty five thousand (base seven) Minutes	62.8833333333333 days	To convert from any number system to the decimal number system, the value of each digit is calculated as "value" * "base" ^ "position of the digit minus one" counting the position of the digit starting from the less significant side. The values of each digit are then added to get the value of the whole number. Base seven means the number only uses 7 digits (0-6). To represent 7 (base10) you would need the first two-digit number, which is 10 (base7). This gives: 5*7^5 + 2*7^4 + 5*7^3 + 0*7^2 + 0*7^1 + 0*7^0 = 90552 minutes. Also references the opening and recurring line "Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes" from w:Seasons of Love, a song from the musical Rent.
63	Jul 12	10^50 Planck times
62	Jul 13	4,000 episodes of The Office (skipping ads)
61	Jul 14	Four Score and Seven Kilominutes
60	Jul 15	2 Lunar Months
59	Jul 16	Half a Day on Venus
58	Jul 17	5 megaseconds	57.8704 days	5,000,000 seconds
57	Jul 18	30 MicroLits (1/1,000,000,000th of the time since the invention of writing)
56	Jul 19	1,000 viewings of Run Lola Run
55	Jul 20	One Million Sound-Miles
54	Jul 21	30 Ionian Months
53	Jul 22	One Dog Year
52	Jul 23	60 Viewings of Star Wars Episodes I-IX
51	Jul 24	1/ 100,000,000,000th of the Universe's age
50	Jul 25	5 milli-Generations
49	Jul 26	10,000 Games of 7 minutes in Heaven or 7 games of 10,000 minutes in Heaven
48	Jul 27	φ^e^π minutes	47.6164 days	68,567.57 minutes
47	Jul 28	4 megaseconds	46.2963 days	4,000,000 seconds
46	Jul 29	2^16 minutes	45.5111 days	65,536 minutes
45	Jul 30	e^e^e seconds	44.1467 days	3,814,279.10 seconds
44	Jul 31	π fortnights	43.98 days
43	Aug 1
42	Aug 2	1 kilowatt-hour per watt	41⅔ days	1000 hours
41	Aug 3
40	Aug 4
39	Aug 5	e fortnights	38.0559 days
38	Aug 6
37	Aug 7
36	Aug 8	7! milliweeks	35.28 days	5040 × 0.001 weeks
35	Aug 9
34	Aug 10
33	Aug 11	777 hours	32.375 days
32	Aug 12
31	Aug 13
30	Aug 14
29	Aug 15	777,777 nanocenturies	28.4077 days	777,777 × 10-9 × 102 years
28	Aug 16
27	Aug 17
26	Aug 18	π^π kilominutes	25.3209 days	36,462.16 minutes
25	Aug 19
24	Aug 20
23	Aug 21
22	Aug 22
21	Aug 23	500 hours	20.8333 days
20	Aug 24	√2 fortnights	19.7990 days	1.4142 × 14 days
19	Aug 25
18	Aug 26
17	Aug 27	√2 megaseconds	16.3682 days	1.4142 × 1,000,000 seconds
16	Aug 28	π^π^π πcoseconds	15.5112 days	1.3402 picoseconds (i.e., 10-12 seconds)
15	Aug 29
14	Aug 30
13	Aug 31
12	Sep 1
11	Sep 2
10	Sep 3
9	Sep 4
8	Sep 5
7	Sep 6
6	Sep 7
5	Sep 8
4	Sep 9
3	Sep 10
2	Sep 11
1	Sep 12
0	Sep 13

Transcript

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Discussion

I've started the table to explain all the calendar entries. Barmar (talk) 00:19, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Is the dog minutes calculation backwards? 777,777 dog minutes should be 777,777 x 7 human minutes, which is over 10 years. Randall seems to be dividing instead of multiplying. Barmar (talk) 00:36, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

No - 1 human year = 7 dog years; 1 dog year = 1/7 human year; 1 dog minute = 1/7 human minute; 777,777 dog minutes = 111,111 human minutes = 77 days, 3 hours, 51 minutes. 172.70.90.173 11:32, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

First entry is probably mistake by Randall, e^pi would give value of 84.5 162.158.203.38 11:57, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

That would be too high, though. 82.xxx days (from midnight at the start of launch day) would fall within the 83rd day before it (Jun 22). 84.5 would fall within the 85th (Jun 20). 172.70.91.58 12:15, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Not sure if this is even worth mentioning, but he forgot the box around the date number in the top corner for August 29th. 172.70.126.151 12:49, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Fyi, used wolfram alpha for most of the calculations. Seems to be able to handle anything I throw at it (nanocenturies, megaseconds, fortnights etc) Aditya95sriram (talk) 13:02, 23 June 2022 (UTC)aditya95sriram

Some of the calculations done forward (assuming what Randall means as a Generation, for example) might be best done as "to get this many days, what does Randall think ilhe is starting from. And see if 365, 365.25 or even 365.24 days per year works best, where relevent. Although I think in many cases you'll find the fractional differences negligable, when done right. (I'm also a bit surprised by the off-by-one errors in days-to-go and derived value, but I suspect that this is because of assymetric rounding effects that would be revealed by running the assumption backwards and seeing how different (or otherwise) the decimals actually are.) 172.70.85.211 13:32, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

I would suggest using 365.2425 days per year, as that's consistent with current leap year conventions. Dansiman (talk) 21:49, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Did not see your comment, but already done trivial replacement. No recalculation that goes more complicated than magnitude, though.

(For the mathematically curious, in the Gregorian calendar it's normally 365 days, but a leap day every four years (+0.25 => 365.25), except no leap day every century (-0.01 => 365.24), except there is every fourth century (+0.0025 => 365.2425). Which is very very close to the more astronomically-precise figure of 365.2422, at least at this point in our planet's history and definitely over the timescale of the Gregorian calendar itself. edit-to-add-convoluted-musings: A successor system might need to de-reinstate three of the Four-Millenial leap-days in every 10,000 year period, or perhaps by re-removing four of its various leap-days then re-reinstating one of those back again, but by the time it's relevent I doubt that 365.2422 is going to be as valid for whatever reason... Hey, by then, maybe we could just deliberately adjust the Earth in or out a bit to make it a better fraction/not a fraction at all! )

On the other hand, the old adage is "no use being precise over imprecise details". One can perhaps apply it to nominal decades (the true average decade; though a given decade might be 10*365 days plus either two or three leap-days, for 3652.5±0.5 days in that instance... not equally likely each way, though) but the Generations calculation already assumes 27 years per generation (not even 27.5, exactly half way between 22 and 33, which already seems a dubious backformation to suit other purposes) and gets a good-enough approximate number. Using a factor precise to around 1 in 146000 alongside one that's unlikely to be even as accurate as 1 in 54 is a bit rich and overly anal (rather than analytic) in the long-run.

But this is explainxkcd, so I'm not saying it's misplaced, just that those who would be pedantic about everything (myself included) might find themselves even more out-pedanted in very reasonable circumstances... ;) 172.70.162.77 22:47, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Not sure about most numbers but at least the order of magnitude seemed plausible. I can't quite find a proper way to read August 28th. π^π^π is roughly 80662.666 - if you read πcoseconds as "picoseconds", that's way less than a second. I have no idea what π * coseconds are supposed to be. π * c * o * seconds doesn't look much better - there are values associated with "c" (speed of light, for example) but I have no idea what "o" could be and certainly nothing that would make this a unit of time. Sixteen days would be 1,353,600,000,000,000,000 ps (picoseconds). π^π^π^π is three orders of magnitude too small, π^π^π^π^π is many orders of magnitude too big a number. Am I missing something (really obvious, maybe?) here? 627235 (talk) 14:52, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Exponent towers are by convention evaluated top-down, so pi^pi^pi should be read as pi^(pi^pi), which is ~1.34e18, which in picoseconds is ~15.51 days. 172.70.114.71 15:21, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

10,000 minutes in Heaven is making out for a week. I was able to find a record for the longest kiss (58 hours, 35 minutes), but not the longest make-out session. I think Randall may be indulging in some nerdy wishfull thinking. Barmar (talk) 15:27, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

When the beer song reached F(0) how would you 'take one down' from -1 bottles of beer? Would they be imaginary bottles of beer? (Joking) At F(n-1) would there be a matter/antimatter annihilation, where Randal could do a riff of What-If #1 and describe the play by play of the bartender turning into exotic forms of matter? 172.69.68.88 15:58, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

(Not ✓-1, it's just straight repeated subtraction, not a power function...) After so much beer, you probably think it a good idea (even necessary) to fill cans up and start to put them back up on the wall... Not sure you could sustain it, to the point of F(-99), but I think someone'd be more than ready to start the process when F(-1) is invoked, for any group of just a few likely individuals.. 172.70.91.58 16:23, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

This begs the question of what beer bottles are doing on a wall, rather than a shelf. Barmar (talk) 16:26, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Randall already considered what happens at F(0), refer to the title text. Paddles (talk) 08:16, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

If you wanted to take down an imaginary bottle of beer, you'd have to take it from another wall that runs orthogonal to the original wall. 172.70.85.211 08:50, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

We've finally filled in all the units columns in the table. Hopefully someone can automate turning that into a transcript. Barmar (talk) 16:51, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Funfact: This comic mentions Cyndi Lauper by name, and it was published on her birthday… 162.158.38.27 20:51, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Sweet! I'm a big fan of playing Time after Time on repeat to get into a flow state, so I loved that one. 162.158.166.183 20:43, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Looks like someone's math is wrong on the explanation for July 18. I calculated using 4681 and 4763 years and they came out to 51.29 days and 52.19 days, respectively. So then I worked backwards and determined that Randall would actually have to be using a number closer to 5200 years to arrive at the correct result of 57 days. Dansiman (talk) 21:49, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Randall seems to be wrong about "It's a Small World". The song is about 2 minutes long, so at 1/10,000 speed it's 20,000 minutes = 14 days. He seems to be using a length a little over 3 minutes. I found a YouTube video of the ride that's 3:45, but the song ends at 2:15 and the rest is silent. Barmar (talk) 22:16, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

This video of it on YouTube lasts 3:02. It was uploaded by Universal Music Group (allied with Disney), making it some kind of 'official' version, and its length fits Randall's calculation. (Also, thanks for making the table!) DKMell (talk) 22:38, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

That could be it. It has a long instrumental coda after the singing is done. Barmar (talk) 14:07, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Could "eπ Ionian months" also be a very subtle reference to the Euler identity given the first two characters of Ionian? Or am I reading/visualising a bit too much into it? Paddles (talk) 08:16, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Aug 26 needs editing, but I just reset my password and can't fix it. At 4 breaths per minute, 100,000 breaths is 17.36 days. To get 17 days exactly, Randall would need to assume about 4.085 breaths per minute. Wjw 08:24, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Most of the calculations are very approximate. Barmar (talk) 14:07, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Many of them were given to subsecond digits of precision, too, so I rounded everything off to two significant digits of days unless there was some compelling reason to have 0, 1, or 3. Don't @ me, because I filled up and homogenized all that column, finally (except for 100,000 breaths, which are slow enough to be what I'm guessing is probably Randall's error.) If someone wants to get a better value for the total duration of Star Trek than the January, 2021 reference I found by counting all the released episodes since up to the date of the cartoon, please do. 162.158.166.183 20:26, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

For Star Trek total run time, it might be best to count all episodes scheduled for release up until August 14, the date of that specification. 172.70.210.233 21:02, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

There's a closing /div HTML tag on the front page after the transcript (but not on this page). Nitpicking (talk) 17:21, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Thoughts on including a "% of error" column in the table?172.70.130.121 15:54, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

An additional column would make it look worse on mobile portrait, and a residual error wouldn't really explain anything that readers couldn't get a gist of by eyeballing. 172.70.210.233 01:31, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Most of these don't really have a margin of error, they're all based on specific numbers, beyond that most of them can go to a ridiculous number of decimal places (mostly due to the infinite decimal places of pi, e and phi). Rounding to 2 decimal places is sufficient and doesn't count as a "margin of error". NiceGuy1 (talk) 23:54, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Several entries were rather unspecific, particularly the ones just saying "See day whatever" (and one "Refer"), so I plugged in some numbers. Also, it seems like the Star Trek entry should specify what's included - strange that unlike the others, it doesn't end up under a day less than the target. Also, that entry referred to/used an article which summarized CBR, I replaced it with the detailed article from CBR itself, then listed all the shows and movies, and added the things the article missed. NiceGuy1 (talk) 23:54, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Great work. I wonder if Randall is counting some fan-made Trek. 172.70.211.36 01:10, 5 July 2022 (UTC)