explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1923: Felsius

2017-12-08T14:42:09Z

173.245.50.186:

Thanks who, at the same time as I, wrote the better explanation with formulae; you're welcome for the table (which, for my first attempt at a MediaWiki table, and in a big hurry to be first*, I think came out all right). ((*Go ahead and edit at will!)) --'''BigMal''' // [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.184|108.162.216.184]] 16:44, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Seems like this is awfully relevant: https://xkcd.com/927/ -- '''Derek Antrican''' [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.23|108.162.246.23]] 16:54, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

You can't write formulas like that! °C is degree(s) Celsius, not the value of some temperature as measured in degrees Celsius. You should write something like [°C] or °C<sup>-1</sup> instead (if we treat °C as an affine function mapping dimensionless values to temperatures). Or you can be explicit and say something like "x°F = ((x − 32) * 5 / 9)°C". --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.54.22|172.68.54.22]] 19:59, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Fahrenheit contribution to the name is disproportionately small for an average of two scales. It should have been at least Falsius, with added punniness, or Fahlsius, to be more unique. -- '''Average Alex'''
: It should be ‘Fahlsius’, or even ‘Fählsius’, but notice that the pronunciation will still be more or less like ‘Felsius’ and not like ‘Fall-sius’ (for the same reason that ‘Fahrenheit’ or ‘Fährenheit’ is pronounced more or less like ‘Fair-enheit’ and not like ‘Far-enheit’. —[[User:TobyBartels|TobyBartels]] ([[User talk:TobyBartels|talk]]) 04:58, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
:It should be Centiheit[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.239|141.101.104.239]] 09:32, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
:No, it should be Celsiheit. Either case, the name would also fit the sign better than Felsius[[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.28|162.158.92.28]] 11:52, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm obliged to share https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=227Hdz8VFKo. As a pedant, I have to point out that water's melting and boiling point aren't quite at 0 °C and 100 °C (and that Celsius originally had it backwards). And I *do* like "Falsius". [[User:Fluppeteer|Fluppeteer]] ([[User talk:Fluppeteer|talk]]) 21:19, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Watch out for Felsius/Celsius or Felsius/Fahrenheit hybrids: https://xkcd.com/419/ [[User:WhiteDragon|WhiteDragon]] ([[User talk:WhiteDragon|talk]]) 22:20, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

What is an "epislon"? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.170|162.158.88.170]] 23:02, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
: A Greek letter; follow the link where the word first appears in the explanation. —[[User:TobyBartels|TobyBartels]] ([[User talk:TobyBartels|talk]]) 04:58, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
:: I'm pretty sure there's no Greek letter epislon. Which is presumably why it got corrected.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.239|141.101.104.239]] 09:40, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

I think the Ukranian Ye (Є) would be closer, visually speaking.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.42|162.158.186.42]] 23:40, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
: Or the mathematical symbol ⋲ (ELEMENT OF WITH LONG HORIZONTAL STROKE) or C̶ (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C + COMBINING LONG STROKE OVERLAY)? Or ℃̶ (DEGREE CELSIUS + COMBINING LONG STROKE OVERLAY)? [[User:Sabik|Sabik]] ([[User talk:Sabik|talk]]) 11:36, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
:: Yes, ELEMENT OF WITH LONG HORIZONTAL STROKE seems exactly right (not only by look, but also since ELEMENT OF is basically a lunate Epsilon already and changing the HORIZONTAL STROKE so that it is LONG is precisely the modification WITH which it needs to be equipped), and I think that we should switch to this immediately! —[[User:TobyBartels|TobyBartels]] ([[User talk:TobyBartels|talk]]) 04:58, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
::: Done. [[User:Sabik|Sabik]] ([[User talk:Sabik|talk]]) 06:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Apparantly someone needs to be taught about the Rømer scale that is the ancestor of both Celcius and Fahrenhet. It has fixed constants for all three of water boiling, freezing and the temperature of brine.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.202.226|162.158.202.226]] 23:06, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

I remove the reference to ammonium chloride from the temperature table because, while it is cool (both figuratively and literally), it's also obsolete: in the modern Fahrenheit scale, this happens at 4°F, not at 0°F. (See the table at {{w|Frigorific mixture}}.) —[[User:TobyBartels|TobyBartels]] ([[User talk:TobyBartels|talk]]) 04:58, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

If the creator of the website that was inspired by the comic created one that was based on SE Asian countries, I would like to know the felsius of that. I am curious as heck.Boeing-787lover 06:33, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Note that as visible on the {{w|Kelvin}} page, the temperatures actually used to define the scales are absolute zero and the triple point of water, as other points, including the boiling temperature of water, body temperature, room temperature, pure water freeze and saturated salt water freeze one, are hard to measure reliably (due to pressure requirements). -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 02:59, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Do you think Randall made up a new symbol for Felsius with the intention of making the job difficult for explain xkcd (or at least knowing that it would complicate matters)? [[User:Sensorfire|Sensorfire]] ([[User talk:Sensorfire|talk]]) 03:15, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

assumably? really? i suppose you use supposably, too, just to annoy. tsk. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.89.133|162.158.89.133]] 13:55, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Reminds me of the time I created a standard that blended the two together in such a way that 0 degrees was the water freezing point (because that does make sense) and 100 degrees was equal to 100 degrees in fahrenheit (because really hot = larger number than celsius.) lol, that was years ago, I don't remember the formula. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.186|173.245.50.186]] 14:42, 8 December 2017 (UTC) Sam

Talk:1838: Machine Learning

2017-05-19T13:18:10Z

173.245.50.186:

Appearently, there is the issue of people "training" intelligent systems out of their gut feeling: Let's say for example a system should determine whether or not a person should be promoted to fill a currently vacant business position. If the system is taught by the humans currently in charge of that very decision, and it weakens the people the humnas would decline and stenghtens the one they wouldn't, all these people might do is feeding the machine their own irrational biases. Then, down the road, some candidate may be declined because "computer says so".
One could argue that this, if it happens, is just bad usage and no inherent issue of machine learning itself, so I'm not sure if this thought can be connected to the comic. In my head, it's close to "stirring the pile until the answers look right". What do you people think?
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.2|162.158.88.2]] 05:39, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

It's a good point but I don't think it's relevant to the comic. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.107.252|141.101.107.252]] 13:55, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Up the creek *with* a paddle. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.121|162.158.111.121]] 07:52, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

It's a compost pile! Stir it and keep it moist until something useful comes out.
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.75.64|162.158.75.64]] 11:40, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
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Actually I doin't think the paddle has anything to do with canoes - paddles like that are often used when stirring large quantities. In Louisiana its called a crawfish or gumbo paddle

I think the entire paragraph that goes "One of the most popular paradigms of..." needs to be cleaned up to make it human readable. [[User:Nialpxe|Nialpxe]] ([[User talk:Nialpxe|talk]]) 12:09, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

The comment that SVMs would be a better paradigm, rather than neural networks, is kind of wrong. Anyone who's worked with neural networks knows they're still essentially a linear algebra problem, just with nonlinear activation functions. Play around with tensorflow (it's fun and educational!) and you'll find most of the linear algebra isn't abstracted away as it might be in Keras, SkLearn or Caret (R). That being said, interpretability is absolutely a problem with these complex models. This is as much because the world doesn't like conforming to the nice modernist notion of a sensible theory (ie. one that can be reduced to a nice linear relationship), but even things like L1 regularisation often leave you wondering "but how does it all fit together?". On the other hand, while methods like SVMs still have a bit of machine learning magic in resolving how its hyperplane divides the hyperspace (ie. the value is derived empirically, not theoretically), the results are typically human interpretable, for a given definition of interpretable. It's no y= wx + b, but it's definitely possible. Same same for most methods short of very deep neural nets with millions of parameters. Most machine learning experts I've met have a pretty good idea what is going on in the simpler models, such as CARTs, SVMs, boosted models etc. The only reason neural nets are blackbox-y is that there's a huge amount going on inside them, and it's too much effort to do more than analyse outputs! [[Special:Contributions/172.68.141.142|172.68.141.142]] 22:43, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Does anyone else think the topic may have been influenced by Google's recently (May 17) featured article about machine learning?[[https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/main/gender-equality-films/]]
--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.79.35|162.158.79.35]] 12:17, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
:Google has been saying a lot about machine learning recently, particularly w.r.t. android. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.107.30|141.101.107.30]] 04:43, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

Maybe one day bots will learn to create entire explanations for xkcd. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.179|141.101.99.179]] 12:38, 17 May 2017 (UTC)
:Good, then maybe we won't have over-thought explanations anymore.
:: "That was a joke, haha" [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 07:36, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

The fuck is "{{w|Pinball}}"? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.66|162.158.122.66]] 03:59, 19 May 2017 (UTC)

On the topic of 'Stirring', I'm not sure why it's being associated with neural networks. It's a common thing in machine learning to randomize starting conditions to avoid local minima. This does exist in neural networks, as edge weights are typically randomized, but it's also the first step in many different algorithms, such as k-means where the initial centroid locations are randomized, or decision trees where random forests are sometimes used. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.186|173.245.50.186]] 13:18, 19 May 2017 (UTC) sbendl