Main Page
Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all 3241 xkcd comics, and only 65 (2%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!
Latest comic
| Countdown Standard |
 Title text: Anyone who is caught counting 'three ... two ... one ... zero ... GO!' will be punished with a lifetime of eating only ISO standard food samples. |
Explanation
This comic reflects the common trope of people preparing for a synchronized action as a group (such as lifting something heavy, or having an electric skateboard race) counting to get everybody to do the action at the same time, without first having agreed at what point in the count they will act. Two of the ways that people often count up can be confusing: the action can be taken on the beat of 'three', or on the beat after 'three'. If the people involved do not all have the same understanding, and so end up acting a beat apart, this could result in undesirable outcomes, such as damage, injury, or just a dispute over who was at fault.
This comic alleges that, if Randall gained control of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), he would standardize counting to go down from three and have the 'go'-point be at zero. However, this proposal would be no better than counting up, as some people may expect to act on the 'one' or, as the title text suggests, to have a 'zero' before the 'go!', leading to exactly the same problems. Moreover, most people are unlikely to refer to the ISO before starting a countdown, and this is likely to simply lead to the problem outlined in 927: Standards.
"Deprecated" is a term applied to something that is no longer recommended for use, so you should fix things so as not to use it anymore. It is commonly used when a standard is replaced by a newer version or an alternative approach, but may still be in use in legacy applications. In this case, it is hard to imagine where there would be a situation where a need to maintain a deprecated standard would arise, since such countdowns tend to be short-lived affairs, so any starting before the publication of the new standard would be unlikely to continue running for appreciable periods after it.
The fact that these are called "countdowns", yet the ones being complained about are counts that go up, is probably intentional, and cause for additional irritation among those who are bothered by the inherent inconsistencies.
The ISO is an international organization that is responsible for standardizing many things (such as technology and safety standards) to allow for smooth interoperability between countries, manufacturers, and so on. However, it doesn't standardize everyday actions like countdowns. Other standards organizations that have somewhat similar functions include the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), which are technically American but have considerable international influence.
The title text refers to "ISO standard food samples". The ISO doesn't offer such samples, but does have documents which describe how food samples should be prepared for standardized analysis. For example, ISO 16050:2003 documents how "cereals, nuts and derived products" are to be analyzed for aflatoxins. ISO 3103 describes a standardized method for brewing tea. It's unclear why such samples would be considered particularly unpleasant or inappropriate for consumption. Perhaps they would be assumed to be unimaginably bland because they would be 'lowest common denominator' illustrations of the base definition of each food. There are NIST Standard Reference Materials for food, such as peanut butter and "typical diet". Hacker lore describes a supposed "ANSI-standard pizza".
Apparently eating these food samples is, in Randall's opinion, suitable punishment for doing β3, 2, 1, 0, Go!β for a countdown. In this he is likely to be disappointed, as he will discover that punishment for non-compliance with standards is not within the remit of the ISO. The possibility of including 0 in such a countdown would be an example of an off-by-one error, as described in 3062: Off By One.
Transcript
- [The comic shows three different ways of counting down]
- One ... Two ... Three! [red X, followed by red text] Deprecated
- One ... Two ... Three ... Go! [red X, followed by red text] Deprecated
- [These first two both followed by a red curly bracket followed by red text:] Too easy to mix up
- Three ... Two ... One ... Go! [green tickmark, followed by green text] ISO Standard
- [Caption below the comic:]
- If I were in charge of ISO, the first thing I'd do would be to standardize the way people count out loud before doing something in sync.
View comic discussionNew here?
Last 7 days (Top 10) |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to create an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for xkcd comics, characters, What If? articles, and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd comic, it should be here.
- If you're new to wiki editing, see the explain xkcd:Editor FAQ for a specific guidance to this wiki and the more general help on how to edit wiki pages. There's also a handy wikicode cheatsheet.
- Discussion about the wiki itself happens at the Community portal.
- You can browse the comics from the list of all comics or by navigating the category tree at Category:Comics.
- The incomplete explanations are listed here. Feel free to help out by expanding them!
Rules
Don't be a jerk!
There are a lot of comics that don't have set-in-stone explanations; feel free to put multiple interpretations in the wiki page for each comic.
If you want to talk about a specific comic, use its discussion page.
Please only submit material directly related to xkcd and, of course, only submit material that can legally be posted and freely edited. Off-topic or other inappropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users who repeatedly post such content will be blocked.
If you need assistance from an admin, post a message to the Admin requests board.
