explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1536: The Martian

2015-09-11T20:15:52Z

108.162.219.118: Updated release date

{{comic
| number = 1536
| date = June 10, 2015
| title = The Martian
| image = the_martian.png
| titletext = I have never seen a work of fiction so perfectly capture the out-of-nowhere shock of discovering that you've just bricked something important because you didn't pay enough attention to a loose wire.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] is very excited about seeing that the trailer for ''{{w|The Martian (film)|The Martian}}'' is finally released, because he really liked the book. Cueball most likely represents [[Randall]] himself in this comic.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue4PCI0NamI This trailer] for ''The Martian'' was released on Monday the 8th June 2015, two days before this comic, although a teaser [https://youtu.be/CumZP6_9sHU "viral" trailer] had been released the previous day. The film, starring {{w|Matt Damon}} (''{{w|Interstellar (film)|Interstellar}}''), is directed by {{w|Ridley Scott}} (''{{w|Alien (film)|Alien}}''). It's due to be released in the United States on October 2nd, 2015.

''The Martian'' is based on {{w|The Martian (Weir novel)| a book of the same name}} by {{w|Andy Weir (writer)|Andy Weir}}. The book is very popular for its funny writing, great cast of characters, and skilled use of realistic science to create drama. The plot is a cross between the film ''{{w|Apollo 13 (film)|Apollo 13}}'' and the plot of the novel ''{{w|Robinson Crusoe}}'' — but just on {{w|Mars}}.

Cueball is telling [[White Hat]] about this trailer and the book, thus White Hat asks if he should read it. Cueball then describes a scene from Apollo 13: ''You know the scene in Apollo 13 where the guy says "we have to figure out how to connect this thing to this thing using this table full of parts or the astronauts will all die?"'' And he then tells White Hat that ''The Martian'' is like that the whole way through. What is actually said in the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2YZnTL596Q mentioned scene] is: ''We gotta find a way to make this fit into the hole for this using nothing but that.'' The first part being a large square box and the other a smaller cylinder.

The film ''Apollo 13'' is based on the true historical event of the {{w|Apollo 13| Apollo 13 incident}} where the astronauts find themselves in a damaged spacecraft. They evacuated from the {{w|Apollo Command Module}}, losing all its life support systems, to the {{w|Lunar Module}} which was designed only for two people for two days instead of three people for four days. One issue the crew faced was a buildup of carbon dioxide. In order to resolve the issue, the crew needed to find a way to attach a square-shaped air-cleaning cartridge from the command module to the circular receptacle of the lunar module. In one [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2YZnTL596Q brief scene], the {{w|Mission Control}} staff gather together a box of items equivalent to what the crew would also have on-board and sit down with the mandate to figure out how the astronauts can connect the two with the items available to them. In that case, the ground crew took on the task of trial and error given the availability of backup supplies in case they damaged or destroyed some of the supplies. Once a working solution was devised, specific instructions were relayed to the astronauts. Cueball suggests that ''The Martian'' essentially consists primarily of the type of problem-solving shown in that scene (as was suggested by the author, Andy Weir, in [https://youtu.be/5SemyzKgaUU?t=45m56s this] interview).

In the final panel, White Hat, who probably would not be so interested in this kind of story, wonders how a novel based on that kind of seemingly cerebral and procedural problem-solving became a big-budget film starring Damon. Big-budget films are generally films with a great deal of special effects and often also action sequences likely to draw big audiences — and to gain big returns. Matt Damon has become a high-profile big-budget star known for action films like the {{w|Bourne (film series)|''Bourne'' film series}}.

'''Spoiler alert:'''<br>
The title text is a reference to a particular part of ''The Martian''s story: The astronaut stranded on Mars has previously established communications with Earth by {{w|repurposing}} the {{w|Mars Pathfinder|Pathfinder}} probe that NASA landed on Mars in 1997. While working on another piece of equipment, he accidentally subjects the probe to an electrical short-circuit, destroying its electronics and "bricking" it. "{{w|Bricking}}" is a term in consumer electronics which essentially means to cause an electronic device to become non-functional and essentially no more useful than a "brick". The term is commonly used in respect of an unrecoverable failure of {{w|software}} and often a corruption of {{w|firmware}}. An unexpected "bricking" can be very surprising, and in a case where the item is critical, could be devastating.

==Trivia==
In [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SemyzKgaUU&feature=youtu.be&t=2760 a video interview] by Adam Savage with Andy Weir the author of ''The Martian'' says that his goal was to make the whole book like the mentioned scene from ''Apollo 13'' - exactly what the comic is saying. The video was posted on YouTube the day after the xkcd comic.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is sitting at a desk using a computer and White Hat walks in.]
:Cueball: Ooh, trailer for ''The Martian!''
:Whitehat: What's that?
:Cueball: Movie of a book I liked.
:Whitehat: Should I read it?

:[Cueball pivots on chair and turns away from computer to face Whitehat.]
:Cueball: Depends. You know the scene in Apollo 13 where the guy says "we have to figure out how to connect ''this'' thing to ''this'' thing using ''this'' table full of parts or the astronauts will all die?
:Whitehat: Yeah?

:[Cueball pivots on chair again and resumes using computer while talking. White Hat looks at his smart phone.]
:Cueball: ''The Martian'' is for people who wish the whole movie had just been more of that scene.
:Whitehat: How on earth did ''that'' become a big-budget thing with Matt Damon?
:Cueball: No idea, but I'm ''so'' excited.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Space]]

Talk:1574: Trouble for Science

2015-09-09T15:22:32Z

108.162.219.118:

Sentence case, or down style, is one method, preferred by many print and online publications and recommended by the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. The only two rules are the two rules mentioned above: Capitalize the first word and all proper nouns. Everything else is in lowercase. http://www.dailywritingtips.com/rules-for-capitalization-in-titles/ [[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.154|173.245.50.154]] 12:30, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

;Problems with the p-value as an indicator of significance

The p-value alone can never be an indicator of significance. However, it is still often used as the only indicator, because a full set of parameters (including sample size, test setup, etc.) can't easily be packed into a single number. There's a nice article in nature about this problem: [http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-statistical-errors-1.14700]
I can also recommend [http://io9.com/i-fooled-millions-into-thinking-chocolate-helps-weight-1707251800this story] about (ab-)using hacked p-values to get maximum publicity. I hope this helps :-) --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.183|141.101.105.183]] 12:41, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
:In this section, I really want to reword the p-valye explanation that "one can assume that the event observed 'exists'." Except where it's an event indirectly observed through a chained effect (unseeable gas molecules observed through brownian motion, unstable particles through detection of their decay particles, prehistoric meteorite impact through a geological/chemical fingerprint, etc) I think it should be more that "this (directly observed) event was directly linked to the presumed cause rather than spontaneous and random, at least w.r.t. the presumed cause being tested". But writing it better than I did just now. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.114|141.101.99.114]] 19:36, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

I think the joke is that these newspapers are talking about how bad science is, and yet they manage to come up with a stupid story about Bunsen burners, presumably being too scientifically illiterate to know the problem. [[User:Timband|Timband]] ([[User talk:Timband|talk]]) 12:55, 7 September 2015 (UTC) Although reading the other comments, it's a much better joke if the Bunsen Burner story is actually true, because that makes all of them about journalists not realising that they are highlighting their own ignorance. [[User:Timband|Timband]] ([[User talk:Timband|talk]]) 16:05, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

See [[Significant]] for another comic on p-values.--[[User:Henke37|Henke37]] ([[User talk:Henke37|talk]]) 14:22, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

;Controlled trials show Bunsen burners make things colder

Actually, I can easily imagine a way to use a Bunsen burner to make something colder. Involving an unlit Bunsen burner that has been placed in the freezer for a couple hours, for example. Nowhere in the headline is there any mention of a flame. --[[User:Svenman|Svenman]] ([[User talk:Svenman|talk]]) 12:59, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

:Actually, there was a (badly formatted and badly placed, probably therefore now removed) comment on the explanation page earlier which pointed out that feeding a Bunsen burner from a propane bottle will cause the pressure, and therefore the temperature, in the bottle to decrease. That is a lot less contrived than my original idea. --[[User:Svenman|Svenman]] ([[User talk:Svenman|talk]]) 13:37, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

::That was me. Trying to get my 2 cents in on my phone before I forgot. http://www.propane101.com/propaneregulatorfreezing.htm as an example. [[User:Mattiep|Mattiep]] ([[User talk:Mattiep|talk]]) 13:45, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

:Correct me if i'm wrong here, but doesn't burning flame from a Bunsen burner cause the temperatures of the flame and the target object to equalize? Sure in most cases that results in a temperature increase in the target object, but I don't see why that would be true in all high temperature cases. The comment about "reducing the rate of heat loss in 2000K+ temp objects" would only be true if the gas (assuming any atmosphere at all) surrounding the target object was cooler than the flame from the bunsen burner. This gets worse in a perfect vacuum. If a 5000K object was in a perfect vacuum and somebody set a lit bunsen burner (assuming the tip had an Oxygen source) to spray across the target object, then the Flame would get hotter as it touched the hotter object and the object would cool as the two temperatures attempted to equalize. No reduction of heat loss would happen. Can we remove the comment about "reducing the rate of heat loss in 2000K+ temp objects" ? [[User:Harodotus|Harodotus]] ([[User talk:Harodotus|talk]]) 22:20, 7 September 2015 (UTC).

::Found an article backing up my previous comment and lacking any objection for several hours, reveresed the note in the article.[http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2xr7dc/can_you_cool_an_object_hotter_than_fire_with_fire/] [[User:Harodotus|Harodotus]] ([[User talk:Harodotus|talk]]) 23:58, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

:Bunsen burners hasten the heat death of the universe, making things colder generally. Showing that in "controlled trials" seems like a challenge for a type 2 civilization, though. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.241.73|198.41.241.73]] 08:30, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I think the joke is in the wording of the headlines. The fact that a replication study fails to reproduce can be seen as a contradiction. Overfeeding rodents leads to fat rodents. This compromises their ability to function als animal (runway) models. I haven't figured out the other ones yet. But that's çause I'm dumb :-). Alva. {{unsigned ip|141.101.104.80}}

:It's way simpler than that - The joke is that people outside of sciences (with no understanding really of how to science) will report basically anything that sounds shocking or exciting, especially if it proves those nerdy, scary scientists wrong! So Randall gives us a bunch of possibly headlines that to a layman read like real, scary news about science, but to scientists this is stuff that is generally well known and understood. The last one is just taking it a step further for credulous news editors - They've been lying to us all this time! 13:33, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
::I think it's even simpler than that: the title is "Trouble for Science" and it shows a series of misleading headlines about misleading (i.e.: invalidated) scientific studies. The implication is "Trouble for Journalism".[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.87|173.245.54.87]] 14:21, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

:I agree. All of the titles are poorly written. All immunoassays are antibody-based, so saying many commercial antibody-based immunoassays are unreliable is redundant, implying they have no idea what an immunoassay is. Problems with the p-value as an indicator of significance implies that there is some significant error in the use of a tool to measure significance of error, which leads one to wonder how they figured that out. If you don't know what a p-test is, the title is paradoxical. The last title would make someone assume that the controlled trials are using turned on bunsen burners to make things colder, but could mean almost anything, such as a bunsen burner being turned off the entire time, or a bunsen burner placed inside of a freezer, or even that people consider using bunsen burners in an experiment makes the experiment cool (or sweet or groovy or whatever). {{unsigned ip|173.245.56.155}}

::I would appreciate someone adding info about what an immunoassay is. [[User:Teleksterling|Teleksterling]] ([[User talk:Teleksterling|talk]]) 22:53, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I generally agree, but would say if you DO know what a p-test is, the title is paradoxical. If you don't know what a p-test is, the title is meaningless. [[User:Miamiclay|Miamiclay]] ([[User talk:Miamiclay|talk]]) 07:05, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

This comic may be in reference to Monsanto's latest ailments. {{unsigned ip|173.245.52.112}}

;Replication study fails to reproduce many published results
:Upon reading that specific headline, the rational behavior would be to question the veracity of all the other headlines before and after. I could see a paper picking up on that sensationalist-looking headline and ignoring the fact it casts doubt on whatever else they published. [[User:Ralfoide|Ralfoide]] ([[User talk:Ralfoide|talk]]) 14:56, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but what is the irony in the first headline? [[User:Djbrasier|Djbrasier]] ([[User talk:Djbrasier|talk]]) 00:54, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_(matter)]: "When a substance undergoes a phase transition (changes from one state of matter to another) it usually either takes up or releases energy. For example, when water evaporates, the kinetic energy expended as the evaporating molecules escape the attractive forces of the liquid is reflected in a decrease in temperature. The amount of energy required to induce the transition is more than the amount required to heat the water from room temperature to just short of boiling temperature, which is why evaporation is useful for cooling. " That could explain the Bunsen burner making things colder (i.e. having less kinetic energy)

About gaussian irregularities. Using a computer and floating point numbers, someone would see irregularities on a gaussian distribution. That amounts to sampling the curve with a small but finite precision. Computing the value a any given point could lead to rounding errors and would be seen as irregularities.

Talk:1574: Trouble for Science

2015-09-09T14:54:25Z

108.162.219.118:

Talk:1453: fMRI

2014-12-01T18:57:19Z

108.162.219.118:

" ... and the magnetic field could rip off their jewelry if they are wearing ..." No, I think he's referring to the fact that the subjects were told to remove their jewelry before going into the machine, so that is still on their minds. --[[User:RenniePet|RenniePet]] ([[User talk:RenniePet|talk]]) 08:10, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Which they are told because of the fields, which might rip and tear, or just heat up metallic objects... :) --[[User:Ergonomist|Ergonomist]] ([[User talk:Ergonomist|talk]]) 10:00, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

: Oh come on, it says "the parts of the brain associated with ... and the removal of jewelry". "Removal of jewelry" is something one does oneself. It's not something one typically thinks about as being done to you by magnetic waves. --[[User:RenniePet|RenniePet]] ([[User talk:RenniePet|talk]]) 10:23, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Look what the Americans have done to the rather beautiful word 'Jewellery'! I thought it was a horrendous typo by Randall... but no. Lets rip out a couple letters so that a flowing word is reduced to sounding like a sullen teenager. --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 10:29, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Do not blame us - its not our fault. The root goes back to 1828, where a linguist named Noah Webster (of Webster's dictionary) laid out a new way to spell words differently in an attempt to differentiate Americans from Britons. It was a whole identity thing, and became extremely popular and took off. Oh well. I always liked the spelling of words with the "ou" in it (colour, etc). On the other hand, "jewellery" just looks rediculous. USA! USA! USA! {{unsigned ip|173.245.56.215}}

Not sure about 'warped tour' referring to 'cognitive confounders'. It's capitalised, so believe that it refers to the travelling music festival; the subject is displaying irritation with the operator constantly talking about their experience at The Warped Tour, just as you would if they were jabbering about last night's TV or the latest boyband. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.176|141.101.98.176]] 11:07, 28 November 2014 (UTC) IB

The Warped Tour reference may be a scientific in-joke: a key part of algorithms for analyzing MRI data is warping the images so the brain regions are lined up to compare them. Your brain and my brain and every other person's brain are not exactly the same size and shape. So an algorithm identifies key anatomical landmarks and warps the images of each brain to a standard brain map. Otherwise it would be impossible to compare brain scans -- pixels that represent your amygdala might be in the same location as pixels that represent your cerebellum.
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.221|108.162.219.221]] 16:17, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Here is a small sample of the extensive scientific literature about biomedical image warping methods:

"warping tensors according to the spatial transformation that is calculated between the original and template spaces will also produce inaccurate results by altering the shape of individual tensors, thereby also altering measurements of local diffusivity and distorting inferences concerning tissue microstructure that are based on those measures of local diffusivity"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2365743/
[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.125|173.245.52.125]] 12:39, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

This is surely an example of the Observer Effect? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_%28physics%29 [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.160|141.101.98.160]] 19:31, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

..."In real experiments, reported activity patterns are always a result of subtracting average brain activity from many samples gathered during task from so called resting-state activity"
Actually, task activation is generally compared to some other control task or condition, rather than resting state, especially for a short-term memory study such as that referenced in the comic. For example some other task with matched stimulus presentation and response demands (i.e. press a button), but without any memory load. And if rest were used as the implicit baseline, it is extremely unlikely any actual subtraction would be done--rather the so-called resting state would be the implicit baseline state of a multiple regression, in which the task-related predictor variables are convolved with a canonical hemodynamic response function. {{unsigned ip|108.162.219.118}} [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.118|108.162.219.118]] 18:57, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Also, the concern with unremoved piercings would not be that they could be ripped off during scanning. A participant or patient would not be allowed in the MR room with a dangerous (i.e. large, ferrous metal) piercing, and if somehow one were it would be noticed prior to the initiation of any functional scans (the magnet is always on, so it would be ripped off or otherwise respond to the magnetic field while the participant was being positioned in the scanner bore). Rather, the concern here would be about the piercings heating up during scanning and potentially burning the participant, or potentially causing magnetic susceptibility artifacts in the acquired images (particularly for facial piercings). As precaution it is common to warn participants with unremoved piercings to be attentive to any heating sensation around their piercings and to notify MR technologists immediately if any heating occurs. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.118|108.162.219.118]] 18:57, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Talk:1453: fMRI

2014-12-01T17:34:14Z

108.162.219.118:

1446: Landing

2014-11-12T06:05:21Z

108.162.219.118: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1446
| date = November 12, 2014
| title = ???
| image = http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/%3F%3F%3F.png
| titletext = ...
}}

==Explanation==
This comic seems to be changing over time like some past comics did. A Full explanation will likely have to wait till more panels are revealed.

It now says 3 hours to separation -- possibly about ESA landing probe on comet soon?

And now it's back to a blank frame.

12:50am: And now it says 'Has anyone ever tried this before?'.

'I don't think so.' A small black horizontal line, only a few pixels has appeared on the left.

Back to a wordless frame. The small black line has grown slightly. The black line has turned into the beginning of a shape, lengthening slightly with two small nubs on it.

Comic hits http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/landing/ and also does requests to http://c4.xkcd.com/stream/comic/landing to get latest frame so it's definitely about the landing.

==Frame by Frame Breakdown==
{| class="wikitable plainlinks table-padding"
|-
!Image
!Day/Time
|-
|http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/landing/r_00-05-00_KsvXIwq84J.png
|00:05:00
|-
|http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/landing/r_00-10-00_fUWUYNkxwp.png
|00:10:00
|-
|http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/landing/r_00-15-00_74eSd3x7BQ.png
|00:15:00
|-
|http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/landing/r_00-20-00_UT4FKycrmC.png
|00:20:00
|-
|http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/landing/r_00-25-00_FX6hlfSQHR.png
|00:25:00
|-
|http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/landing/r_00-30-00_FjnXADopvO.png
|00:30:00
|-
|http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/landing/r_00-35-00_lVC98SMY1X.png
|00:35:00
|-
|http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/landing/r_00-40-00_wmf0bPtxDN.png
|00:40:00
|-
|http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/landing/r_00-45-00_MZprhbADHL.png
|00:45:00
|-
|http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/landing/r_00-50-00_Z63bWhoaxd.png
|00:50:00
|-
|http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/landing/r_00-55-00_2wCeCFN0R1.png
|00:55:00
|-
|http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/landing/r_01-00-00_FRnIhqA5IZ.png
|01:00:00
|}

==Transcript==

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Dynamic comics]]