explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

24: Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey

2015-07-29T17:47:26Z

173.245.55.71: /* Interpretations */ fix typos

{{comic
| number = 24
| date = September 30, 2005
| title = Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| image = godel_escher_kurthalsey.jpg
| titletext = I love the idea here, though of course it's not a great-quality drawing or scan.
}}

==Explanation==
Before starting xkcd, [[Randall]] worked on robotics at {{w|NASA}}'s Langley Center. This drawing was apparently made during that period, while attending a talk that he didn't like.

The name of the comic is a portmanteau-like play on the following:
* {{w|Gödel, Escher, Bach}} is a book by {{w|Douglas Hofstadter}}. He is an American author who has written several books about philosophy, mathematics, and science. This particular book is his most famous one, about "strange loops", self-reference, and recurring patterns, partially shown through the works of the three people in its title:
** {{w|Kurt Gödel}} was a 20th-century mathematician most famous for proving that in our commonly used axiomatic systems, there are true propositions that cannot be proved from the axioms. His proof used a self-referential paradox.
** {{w|M. C. Escher}} was a 20th-century artist most famous for mathematically-inspired engravings of tessellated animals, impossible scenes, [http://philosopherdeveloper.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/devilsangels.jpg fractals], and so on. The form of this strip resembles one of his [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2c/Escher,_Metamorphosis_II.jpg Metamorphosis etchings].
** {{w|Johann Sebastian Bach}} was a German composer and musician from the Baroque Period, famous for numerous works such as the Brandenburg Concertos.

* [http://www.kurthalsey.com Kurt Halsey] is a comic artist from Oregon. His work often contains introspective philosophical musings. At least one phrase in the letter is attributed to Halsey, "The past is just practice".

The comic is drawn in the form of a {{w|storyboard}} and is clearly intended to be visualized as an animated sequence.

In the first part of the comic, two people discuss the difficulty of comparing past and present generations, since the person making the comparison invariably belongs to one of the two groups.

It's unclear whether the hatted guy is [[Black Hat]], because Randall hadn't standardized his character designs yet. The sarcastic comment suggests that it is. If it is, then this would be his first appearance. (He also appears in [[12: Poisson]] but that comic was released about 3 month later, but the numbering did not follow the release day on [[LiveJournal]] when the comics were transfered to xkcd - see the [[12:_Poisson#Trivia|trivia]] for that comic.)

The assembly of text panels found in the middle of the strip is similar to his [[124: Blogofractal]].

The philosophy of Kurt Gödel is also a theme here: [[468: Fetishes]].

==Interpretations==
''While I feel this article can't be improved with rational arguments, I believe a standalone section with different hypothesis is a great way to tackle the problem. If the goal here is not to go into subjective interpretations of the comic, then I think its better tagged as closed, because you obviously can't go any further by ignoring the symbols. (You may want to edit meta-comments out, but I wanted to make my point first). Please add to or adapt my interpretation to whatever suits you or the community here. It would be very nice if we could have a subjective section for people to explain what they interpreted out of the strips.''

* The bubbles may illustrate ideas, memories or subjects that one could wonder about. In the context of the boring talk, this would mean that Randall is lost in thoughts and gradually loses focus of things going on around him. He sees the talk as mundane, as a part of so many other "subject bubbles".
** Even the comic vertical lines (and therefor the strip's structure) seems to lose their sense to Randall as they collapse and become part of the scene, eventually merging three panels into one. They later reappear for the last six panels.
* The big bubble pushing the small ones further outside may demonstrate how shallow the surface bubbles are to him or represent an infinite (or very large) amount of small bubbles.
* The quote stating "There's too much. And so little feels important." tell us that he feels overwhelmed by the world; maybe by information given in the NASA talk or by events in his life. He recognizes what is important to him, and feels it is small compared to the size of the worries of the world (or the big bubble). He may have experienced a sort of existential crisis before turning to his feeling of love in the last panels, when asking himself "What do you do?".
* The structure of the strip has some abstract connections with the structure of the book. The beginning, middle, and end sequences reflect back on themselves; the strip displays some symmetry. In the book there's an interplay of contributions from the artist, the musician, and the mathematician; some of this is present in the strip [Lots of citations missing]

The biggest bubble is expanding, and on it is a fractal arrangement of articles describing various scientific and philosophical discussions. A subjective interpretation is that the fractal nature of the excerpts are a comment on the unending attempt to rationalize and justify the unchanging nature of humanity. The largest bubble bursts, leaving the two figures on a shred of what once was. The final question is "What do you do when the bubble bursts?" It seems his answer is to find someone, and love them; in the end that's all that matters. The rest is just air.

==Transcript==
:Drawn during an unending NASA lecture.
:[Two people are talking, one in a hat.]
:Cueball: it's just so hard to compare kids now with kids in the past. you can't help but to belong to one group or the other.

:Cueball: and of course every generation seems awful to the one before it. look at quotes from throughout history.

:Hatted: yeah, and it sure would be nice to have some historical perspective on some of this stuff. I just don't know what to make of it.
:[Circles are appearing--maybe snow?]

:Cueball: i guess you do what you can to help the people around you and hope it turns out okay.

:Cueball: in the end, what else can you do?

:Hatted: lead a crusade?

:[We can no longer see the people, just the circles.]
:it's presentism, man. the idea that historical context is irrelevant, that we understand it

:all that we need take no warnings from the follies of the past. that we're facing something new.

:socrates couldn't imagine the internet. but people don't change.
:[We can start to see a darker circle in the lower right corner.]

:(The borders between the three panels on this line are cracking.)
:have you seen those collections of historical pornography? talk about historical context.

:did you know the first porn photo was bestial in.
:[inside a circle:] nature?

:at least that stuff was out of the mainstream
:[each word in one circle:]
:no
:just
:in
:history

:(the three panels have merged into one on each row.)

:i don't know about you, but
:[circled] I
:[uncircled] never

:even once seen

:[The circles are highly variable in size now, and pressed up against a larger one on the right side.]

:[There is mass of circles of different sizes, with some dark fissures in between, against the side of a large circle which we can see part of in the right half of the panel. They look like cells. There's a tiny square in the center of the giant cell.]

:[We see only the tiny square, centered. It has a few marks inside it.]

:[Closer, the square is divided into rectangles of different sizes, each of which has text in it.]

:[Much closer, we can see fragments of the text. Some are sideways, some are cut off, some are too small to read.]
:machine language translated by principles of isomorphism it is a consequence of the Church-Turing thesis that ...
:but how do you select the channel you wish to se-
:thou ... shou ... palin ... stri ... it is a ... crab ...
:be obvious to one-s ... your great intellectual achievements ... Tortise. Why ... you give this old Tortise ...

:[Closer still, we can just see a huge sideways s and h.]

:[Those letters are faded and mixed with a faded version of the next panel.]

:girls take boys away ...
:never be further than a phone call and a goosebumped shiver away ...
:drove all night listening to mix tapes ...
:the past is just practice
:[There is a heart at the bottom and, in the lower left, the name Kurt.]

:[The same as the previous panel, but with the words blurred out to scribbles.]

:[Jagged, shaded shapes and strands start to fall. Faint panel borders appear again. There is a person on the far right.]

:(Back to three panels per row.)
:[Cueball and Megan are standing amid the fragments.]

:Man: There's too much. And so little feels important.

:[The jagged edge of the shaded area is encroaching on the sides of the panel.]

:What do you do?

:[We see them from farther away through a rough hole in the shaded area. Bits continue to fall around them.]

:[They are holding hands.]

==Trivia==
*This was the 6th comic originally posted to [[LiveJournal]].
**The previous was [[1: Barrel - Part 1]].
**The next was [[13: Canyon]].
*Original title: "Strip series"
*Original [[Randall]] quote:
::"One of a series of strips I drew during a long and boring NASA lecture. It careens wildly from intellectual to chaotic to Godel, Escher, Bach to Kurt Halsey to chaotic and sappy.
::
::The whole series is here. "
*The last word "here" is a link which indicate that the image posted on LiveJournal was only part of this strip.
**Unfortunately, both the image of this strip and the link posted on LiveJournal is broken (also in the archive).
**So it is not known if there is even more to this strip than now posted on xkcd or
**If the original post only covered a small part of this very long strip. In that case the link would take the user to the full comic, the one here, which was later posted on xkcd.
**If anyone know which of the above is true, please make a comment here. (Do edit, but make sure to indicate that this is a fact then).
*This was one of the [[:Category:First day on LiveJournal|thirteen first comics]] posted to LiveJournal within 12 minutes on Friday September 30, 2005.
*This comic was posted on [[xkcd]] when the web site opened on Sunday the 1st of January 2006.
**It was posted along [[:Category:First day on xkcd|with all 41 comics]] posted before that on LiveJournal as well as a few others.
**The latter explaining why the numbers of these 41 LiveJournal comics ranges from 1-44.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics posted on livejournal| 06]]
[[Category:First day on LiveJournal| 06]]
[[Category:First day on xkcd]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Romance]]
[[Category:Philosophy]]

Talk:1384: Krypton

2014-06-20T15:08:41Z

173.245.55.71:

Is the Earth baby the real reason Krypton was destroyed? [[Special:Contributions/103.22.201.239|103.22.201.239]] 08:58, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Is now a good time to mark the shark jump? --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.135|108.162.210.135]] 12:52, 20 June 2014 (UTC)
-Only if this keeps up. Yeah, it's a crappy comic, but I don't think the quality overall has been dropping that much. Everyone has off days. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.83|173.245.55.83]] 13:58, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Not so bad if you can relate to the anguish of parenting a colicky kid. Sending him to Krypton is an improvement on some of the things I was tempted to do. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.71|173.245.55.71]] 15:08, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Talk:1347: t Distribution

2014-03-26T13:25:30Z

173.245.55.71:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student%27s_t-test

[[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.73|173.245.50.73]] 05:20, 26 March 2014 (UTC)Adam

I think this is a comment of the quality of education today - it is difficult to grade students on a distribution curve and even more so when you take into account the distribution curve of the teachers ability. {{unsigned ip|108.162.249.205}}

I noticed the teacher's curve is symmetrical, and after further inspection it could be interpreted as an edge detection: high values show where an edge occurs. The two highest peaks would nicely align with the edges of the paper, the next highest peaks fit the edges of the table, and the rest could be approximation artefacts, as they're equidistant and rather insignificant compared to those four. I'm not statistics pro, but maybe that rings someone's bells? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.239|108.162.210.239]] 07:56, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

:Interesting observation. It may play into an age-long legend told and re-told among the students that some teachers grade papers by tossing the whole pile in the air; those sheets that land on the teacher's desk get a pass, those falling to the floor get a fail. Sometimes the story gets modified in such a way that papers falling on the teacher's book (or other object) laying on the desk will get a higher marking than those simply hitting the desk. The latter version would explain the higher sheet-size-apart peaks. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.111|108.162.210.111]] 08:57, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

To be more explicit, I think the sheet of paper represents some data. Cueball is not happy with the results of applying Student's t test, so ze is trying more complex tools in the hope of getting significance. -- TimMc / [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.27|173.245.52.27]] 11:51, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Man, normally these explanations clear the comic right up for me, but I've read this one thrice now and I still can't figure out what a t-distribution is, much less a joke based on one. The only definition being a Wikipedia quote written in legalese doesn't help. So a t-distribution estimates...the probability of a population's average when there's unknown information?[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.48|108.162.216.48]] 12:17, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
:The unknown information is the sample size (class size, for example) and standard distribution (by how much, on average, is something going to vary from the mean). The unknown information is not "in the data".[[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 12:28, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
:Basically, if you have an underlying process that would produce samples with a Gaussian distribution with mean of 0, and stddev of 1, and then you pull a finite number of samples out of it, and do the usual "average" operation on those samples (i.e. sum them and divide by the number of samples) you would expect that that computed average would be close to zero. But it might not be! By chance the samples you pulled might mostly have been from the far right or left side of distribution and the average you got would be way off. Student's T distribution (for a certain number of samples, n) is basically "given that the underlying process a Gaussian with mean zero and stddev of 1, if I repeatedly take n samples from that distribution and compute the average of those samples to get an "estimated mean", this is how I expect that estimated mean to be distributed". Naturally, this is important in questions like "I took 100 samples and got an average of 0.02 -- does this mean that it is sensible to think that the mean of the underlying distribution is actually zero?"
: Of course, most of the joke is that the distribution is named "Student's", which is not strongly dependent on the nature of the statistics. [[User:Vyzen|Vyzen]] ([[User talk:Vyzen|talk]]) 12:42, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
The teacher's t-distribution looks like multiple spikier curves with different centres added together
and it doesn't fit the table. [[User:Wwt|Wwt]] ([[User talk:Wwt|talk]]) 13:17, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

I took from it that the Students Distribution was too perfect, and real data would rarely yield those idealized results in a small sample size. That the teacher's distribution used actual numbers, with the occasional spikes. I took from the title text, the tendency of students, or anyone with pre-conceived notions, to keep redoing the test until they get the results they expect, in this case, the textbook result. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.71|173.245.55.71]] 13:25, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

1061: EST

2014-01-18T02:37:57Z

173.245.55.71: /* Length of Year */

{{comic
| number = 1061
| date = May 28, 2012
| title = EST
| image = est.png
| titletext = The month names are the same, except that the fourth month only has the name 'April' in even-numbered years, and is otherwise unnamed.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic pokes fun of attempts to "fix" the calendar by making it simpler or more rational, which inevitably result in a system just as complicated. This is an example the paradox in complexity theory that if you attempt to simplify a system of problems by creating a new system of evaluation for the problems you often have instead made the problem more complex than it was originally.

===Length of Year===

Because there are approximately 365.2422 days in a {{w|solar year}}, various calendars use different means to keep the calendar year in sync with the solar year and the seasons. The Julian Calendar, for example, has leap days every four years, giving it an average day length of 365.25 years. The most widely used system is the {{w|Gregorian Calendar|Gregorian Calendar}}, which also has leap days every four years, but skips leap days in years divisible by 100 unless the year is also divisible by 400. This gives it an average day length of 365.2425 days, which is very close to the length of a solar year.

{{w|Calendar reform|Other calendars}} have been proposed, such not counting leap days and special "festival days" as a day of the week, in order to make every date fall on the same day of the week every year.

[[Randall]] advertises his idea for an "Universal Calendar for a Universal Planet". He combines {{w|calendar#Calendars in use|calendar}} definitions with {{w|Time zone|time zone}} definitions. The abbreviation ''EST'' is a joke on the American {{w|Eastern Time Zone|Eastern Standard Time}}.

*At "24 hours 4 minutes", EST days are longer, though there are only 360 of them in the year. The extra 4 minutes over the course of 360 days adds up to one standard day, so Randall's EST calendar would at this point have a year that is 361 standard days long.

*Running the clock backwards for 4 hours after every full moon gives 8 additional hours at each full moon, twelve or thirteen times in a year. Because a thirteenth full moon will occur once every 2.7 solar years on average, this modification adds 4.1228 standard days to an EST year, bringing it to 365.1228 days.

*The doubling of the non-prime numbers of the first non-reversed hour after each solstice and equinox is a final, very complicated way to bring Randall's EST year in extremely close sync with the solar year. There are 17 prime numbers between 0 and 59 and 43 non-primes. There are 2 equinoxes and 2 solstices each year, so a total of 172 minutes will occur twice. This brings the average length of Randall's EST year to 365.2422 standard days, equal to the solar year to four decimal places.

===Claimed Benefits===
Many of the claimed benefits for the calendar are highly dubious:
*While it is fairly ''simple'' to describe, EST is far from simple to understand or put in practice. Clocks in particular would have to regularly undertake very complicated processes like running backwards or duplicating non-prime minutes.
*EST does appear to be fairly ''clearly defined''.
*EST fails completely to be ''unambiguous''. Following each full moon, four hours occur three times, twice forward and once backward. Several minutes are also duplicated, making times during those periods ambiguous.
*The only way EST is ''free of historical baggage'' is that it breaks free of any sensible bits of historical baggage; it keeps such things as the 30-day month and 12-month year, but adopts a different (and variable) length of day that would make it wildly out of sync with the Earth's day-night cycle.
*EST is ''compatible with old units'', as far as seconds, minutes, and hours are concerned, though not for days, months, or years.
*EST is indeed very ''precisely synced with the solar cycle''.
*EST is ''free of leap years'', though some EST years are 8 hours longer than others on account of having an extra full moon.
*A calendar ''amenable to date math'' makes it easy to find the length of time between two dates and times by having standardized periods of time. The complex variability of the length of EST years, days, and hours mean it is only ''intermittently'' amenable to date math, which is to say not at all.

===Other Features===

The features of the calendar get increasingly bizarre as the description proceeds:

*The {{w|Epoch (reference date)|Epoch}} for EST is set by reference to the {{w|Julian calendar}}, which was superseded by the {{w|Gregorian calendar}}. The Julian calendar is currently 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar.

*The different zone for the United Kingdom is a reference to 1 yard being equal to 0.9144 meters, a pun on using {{w|imperial units}} instead of the {{w|metric system}}.

*Randall does not like {{w|Daylight Savings Time}} very much, as mentioned later in [[1268: Alternate Universe]].

*{{w|Narnia (world)|Narnian time}} is a reference to the fictitious world of Narnia in CS Lewis's {{w|The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe}} and its sequels. In Narnia, time passes much more quickly than in the real world. You could be in Narnia for several days and only a few minutes would have passed in the real world. However, synchronizing this effect would be impossible because it is not a consistent rate; it fluctuates wildly based on the whims of drama and magic.

*The Gregorian calendar does not include the year "0", after "1" BC the next year is "1" AD. Randall's invention fixes this according to correct Mathematics... only to reintroduce the problem immediately by arbitrarily omitting the year 1958. The year 1958 is significant because January 1, 1958 is the epoch (time zero) in {{w|International Atomic Time}} (TAI), which is part of the basis for {{w|Coordinated Universal Time}} (UTC). (The main difference is that TAI doesn’t add leap seconds).

*The title text may be a reference to the ancient (Pre-Babylonian Exile) [http://www.jewfaq.org/calendar.htm Jewish Calendar], which did not name the months, rather assigning them numbers from 1 to 12. The names used by Jews today are the names of the Babylonian months, derived from various Babylonian deities.

==Transcript==
:XKCD{{sic}} Presents
:'''EARTH STANDARD TIME'''
:(EST)
:A Universal Calendar for a Universal Planet
:EST is...
:Simple * Clearly Defined * Unambiguous
:Free of Historical Baggage * Compatible with Old Units
:Precisely Synced with the Solar Cycle * Free of Leap Years
:Intermittently Amenable to Date Math

:UNITS
:Second: 1 S.I. Second
:Minute: 60 seconds
:Hour: 60 minutes
:Day: 1444 minutes (24 hours 4 minutes)

:Month: 30 Days
:Year: 12 months

:RULES
:For 4 hours after every full moon, run clocks backward.
:The non-prime-numbered minutes of the first full non-reversed hour after a solstice or equinox happen twice.

:[Epoch]
:00:00:00 EST, January 1, 1970 = 00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970 (Julian calendar)
:[Time Zones]
:The two EST time zones are
:''EST'' and ''EST (United Kingdom)''. These are the same except that the UK second is 0.9144 standard seconds.

:Daylight saving: Countries may enter DST, but no time may pass there.
:Narnian Time: Synchronized.
:Year Zero: EST ''does'' have a year 0. (However, there is no 1958.)

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]