explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1155: Kolmogorov Directions

2013-01-04T20:58:19Z

208.98.237.225:

How does Cueball know that? '''[[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 05:17, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

I really like the title text on this one. [[Special:Contributions/108.233.253.211|108.233.253.211]] 07:19, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
: It's reminiscent of "What time is it?" "It's time to buy a watch." --[[User:Prooffreader|Prooffreader]] ([[User talk:Prooffreader|talk]]) 12:24, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Although, the GPS doesn't know everything. Mine has led me astray, now and then. Took me to an Ikea which had never been at the address it indicated; took me to a shopping centre and left me to my own devices finding one restaurant in 40 acres of other stuff; took me to someone rural whose street address turned out to be a postal superbox, a couple of miles from my friend's actual home. Of course, usually Cueball is right and the directions-giver is wrong... still, ask.[[Special:Contributions/24.79.11.46|24.79.11.46]] 20:03, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Randall is way too sadistic and double-entendre prone to take this comix at face value, as if only about a math theorum. What if it carries implicit context of Manhattan, and the need to check math logic against practical reality?

Lexington is one way, southbound. Except midtown where one would hit York Ave/Sutton Place (possibly going backwards on a one way street after the first left, depending on starting point), or in a section of East Harlem with Pleasant Ave, every avenue one passes is a prime numbered one, until hitting FDR Drive, or unless the street cuts off at 3rd Ave. IOW, one would make one turn and dead end at the East River (or 3rd), unless one were in a block where a 2nd left on York or Pleasant led to an infinite loop the other end of which would be back on Lexington passing the starting point. For half the potential starting addresses, one would primarily drive backwards on one way streets.

Let's hope the directions recipient is walking the 1 to 4 blocks East if that means a Westbound car traffic only street. If in a section with an infinite loop, who's the ideal character to be a victim of Cueball's perverse joke? I have seen a real GPS route away from the destination, where driving across a creek would be required to follow bad GPS routing. [[Special:Contributions/69.161.108.98|69.161.108.98]] 06:34, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I would have thought that Randall meant the town of Lexington, Massachusetts, since he is lives in this area, and there's a Munroe Cemetery. The problem is the lack of highways mentioned, and the definition of number in the sense of highway designation. For instance, if I see a highway designated 2A, I can no longer assume that the highway number is decimal, but does that mean hexadecimal? does that mean I must interpret all highway numbers as hexidecimal, and determine their prime-ness from there? The other problem is the 'named after a president' - Assuming this is restricted to the USA, does this apply only to popular designations, or any name, however long forgotten about? because, looking at the map of Lexington, you will see that there are NO highways named after presidents. Oh, the worries. [[Special:Contributions/76.119.234.207|76.119.234.207]] 18:34, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Or maybe those *are* directions to a store to buy a GPS... [[Special:Contributions/208.98.237.225|208.98.237.225]] 20:58, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Talk:1154: Resolution

2012-12-31T22:19:30Z

208.98.237.225:

It's good! But self-explanatory? -- [[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 16:06, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

The reference to a single data point may reference a common problem in "long-term" or "one-off" observations - that statistical significance can probably never be achieved because of the labour involved in creating individual data points. In this case Cueball essentially makes one data point per year (or many depending on whether you consider individual observations to happen throughout the year...), and thusly one year is insufficient to determine if there is a large "yearly" loop with nested daily/weekly loops.

Humans seem to have a biological mechanism to bypass this conundrum wherein we make linear extrapolations or use weak induction for situations where there is insufficient data.[[Special:Contributions/208.98.237.225|208.98.237.225]] 22:19, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Talk:1154: Resolution

2012-12-31T22:18:30Z

208.98.237.225: