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Talk:1529: Bracket

2015-05-25T15:22:00Z

Bart9h: /* celebrity deathmatch */ new section

What's the connection between Rip Torn and Natalie Imbruglia? {{unsigned ip|108.162.238.183}}
:Answer: Her song, Torn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV1XWJN3nJo-{{unsigned|Stumpy}}

Any pairings that you'd add, given the opportunity? Personally I always confuse [[wikipedia:Wilson Pickett|Wilson Pickett]] and [[wikipedia:Wilson Phillips|Wilson Phillips]]. [[User:Studley|Studley]] ([[User talk:Studley|talk]]) 08:28, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
[[wikipedia:Will Ferrell|Will Ferrell]] and [[wikipedia:Pharrell Williams|Pharrell Williams]] for me! -{{unsigned|Stumpy}}

Why do some first round pairings have more than two people? Beyoncé starts at the third round, so it can't be just because of the number of people. There has to be a joke in them but I don't see it. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.176|141.101.104.176]] 08:45, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
:Possibly an in-joke at the NCAA bracket's First Four round. Mister/Fred Astaire/Rogers is a more "traditional" reference to the First Four. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.103|108.162.219.103]] 10:32, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps it's worth adding to a trivia section that (assuming every person/thing has an equal chance of winning every matchup, Beyonce has the highest odds of winning (1/32 = 3.125%) while Kurt Russell, Russell Crowe, Russell Brand, and Russell Simmons are all tied for having the worst starting odds (1/256 = .391%).[[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.91|108.162.219.91]] 09:19, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I may be worth mentioning that the bracketing trees resemble hierarchical clustering dendrograms in which some string similarity metric was used as a distance function.

Although the comic is formatted as a tournament bracket, there are hints that it is in fact a dendrogram based on string similarity, in a similar way to how trees of evolutionary relationships between proteins are formed. We see this especially in the "Russell" group where there is equal similarity between any name containing "Russell" and so that group is not resolved into two separate forks. If readers wish to recreate such an analysis for themselves they can take the text on [http://pastebin.com/DRqjaDHH here] paste it into a [http://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/msa/clustalw2/ multiple sequence aligner], press Submit, then after processing click Phylogenetic Tree and scroll down. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.74|141.101.99.74]] 12:46, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Is there any significance to the number of entries? 52 on the left side but only 51 on the right?

;Title text
Changed the reference of the Title Text from Doctor Who (who is already listed in the comic) to Dr. Dre, as the phrasing of the Title Text seems like a very direct reference to the 2001 song "Forgot About Dre." {{unsigned|Conquistador}}
:Probably would have been better to add it as an option since we're clearly far from certain -{{unsigned|Stumpy}}

Why not Zoidberg? --RhyvenNZ [[Special:Contributions/198.41.238.41|198.41.238.41]] 09:55, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Pretty sure Doctor Who is covered by "The Doctor". He doesn't go by "Who" in the show. He's just the Doctor. I think the missing doctor is House. {{unsigned ip|108.162.215.127}}

Dr. Pepper, maybe? Does "staring" or "forgotten" have to do with it? {{unsigned ip|108.162.237.156}}

Whatagainnow? {{unsigned ip|108.162.222.178}}

Dr. Oz? Dr. Phil? Dr. Watson? Dr. Kavorkian? Dr. Seuss? Wasn't there a famous literary work, The Lost Island of Dr. Moreau? I agree that Dr. House and/or house calls could be a missing candidate for the bracket. But then, there are a ton of 'Sirs' that didn't make the list.  {{unsigned|GAKDragon||please sign your posts appropriately with the appropriate user and talk page links using <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>}}
:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Teeth_and_The_Electric_Mayhem Doctor Teeth!] [[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 13:50, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Or is "The Doctor" http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Doctor? {{unsigned ip|108.162.215.108}}
:The Doctor is already in the bracket. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.49|141.101.99.49]] 10:40, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

It's Doctor House - definitely and finally! {{unsigned|Raydleemsc}}

Definitely "Doc" Brown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Brown {{unsigned ip|108.162.221.171}}

Could the joke simply be "there are way too many famous doctors", so even though it's arguably the most numerous category in the bracket, some are still "forgotten"?

Probably not talking about doctor who, however he could be referencing The Silence, which is a an alien race, on that show, which you immediately forget about after losing sight of it. {{unsigned|KroniK907}}

I immediately thought of Amy's wedding in Dr Who S5Ep13 where she needed to remember the doctor to bring him back. Too obscure? [[User:Blu003|Blu003]] ([[User talk:Blu003|talk]]) 13:07, 25 May 2015 (UTC)
:Hardly. You want obscure, try The Doctor's granddaughter. Yep, he had/has one. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.144|108.162.237.144]] 13:41, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Y'know, I can't help but feel that this is a little to bland and unfinished for xkcd. I'm willing to bet that the picture updates with winners. May be sorely disappointed though. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.119|108.162.219.119]] 15:02, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Can't help but feel that there's a better way to lay this explanation out, but I haven't been able to come up with it. Maybe some sort of table listing all the different groups, with people allowed to be in more than one group? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.232|141.101.98.232]] 15:18, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

== celebrity deathmatch ==

This reminds me of Celebrity Deathmatch. Then have:

* Charles Manson vs. Marilyn Manson
* Backstreet Boys vs. Beastie Boys
* The Three Stooges vs. The Three Tenors
* Kevin Costner vs. Kevin Smith
* John Cusack vs. John Malkovich
* David Blaine vs. David Copperfield
* Corey Feldman vs. Corey Haim
* Jack Black vs. Jack White

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Celebrity_Deathmatch_episodes

1165: Amazon

2014-08-27T20:13:05Z

Bart9h: Manaus is way close to the middle point of the river than the mouth. Belem is the city close to the mouth.

{{comic
| number = 1165
| date = January 25, 2013
| title = Amazon
| image = amazon.png
| titletext = Amazon.com took a surprise early lead with 'Time required to transport a package from Iquitos, Peru to Manaus, Brazil' but then lost it at 'Minutes to skeletonize a cow'.
}}

==Explanation==
The {{w|Amazon River}} in South America is the second longest river in the world and by far the largest by waterflow. {{w|Amazon.com}} is a website that specializes in commerce and selling goods over the internet. The "round 14" suggest they are being compared in different criteria in a sort of competition. With such different systems, we can assume that most of those comparisons were similarly funny. The title text mentions two other criteria of comparison.

The measure of flow for the Amazon river (cubic meters per second) indicates the volume of water that passes a given point in the river at any second. To illustrate how much 220,000 cubic meters is, the comic shows a car parked next to 220,000 cubic meters of water. 220,000 cubic meters equals a cube with an edge length of 60.4 meters. By comparison the 0.9 cubic meters of goods that are shipped by Amazon.com seems very small (note that 0.9 cubic meters of goods per second is still a lot). To illustrate this size, the comic shows an Amazonian fish (or possibly an {{w|Amazon river dolphin}}) investigating the packages.

{{w|Iquitos}} and {{w|Manaus}} are cities near the source and middle point respectively of the river; the title text suggests that it is faster to have a package shipped between the two than let it drift downstream. 'Minutes to skeletonize a cow' refers to {{w|piranha}}, an Amazonian predatory fish with a popular reputation of being capable of the mentioned act when hunting in groups, which has little basis in reality, though.

==Transcript==
:Round 14
:Estimated outflow volume
:in cubic meters per second
:[A cube of water representing the outflow of the Amazon.]
:Amazon 220,000
:[A pile of boxes representing the outflow of Amazon.com.]
:Amazon.com 0.9
:Advantage: Amazon

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]

853: Consecutive Vowels

2014-08-07T14:26:53Z

Bart9h: queueing has five, not six vowels. let's count: Q U(1) E(2) U(3) E(4) I(5) N G

{{comic
| number = 853
| date = January 28, 2011
| title = Consecutive Vowels
| image = consecutive_vowels.png
| titletext = But the windows! What if there's a voyeur watchi-- wait, now I'm turned on too.
}}

==Explanation==
After extensive research, [[Cueball]] shows [[Megan]] a chart depicting the relationship between sexual arousal and consecutive vowels, showing that a high amount of consecutive vowels will make someone much more sexually aroused. Megan says she doesn't get it, but Cueball interrupts her with "queueing", a word with 5 consecutive vowels. Megan dramatizes this by immediately asking for sex with "FUCK ME NOW."

The title text shows that Cueball is fearful that there may be a voyeur peeking at them, but as "voyeur" has 4 consecutive vowels if "y" is considered a vowel, Cueball is turned on as well.

==Transcript==
:Cueball: I was running a factor analysis on this huge database, and check out what it found:
:[Cueball holds up the chart.]

:[A graph plotting "sexual arousal" against "consecutive vowels." The trendline is a smooth exponential curve.]

:Megan: Huh? This chart makes no sense. What-
:Cueball: "Queueing"

:[Megan grabs Cueball.]
:Megan: ''FUCK ME NOW.''

==Trivia==
*The word "queueing" is not recognized by most spellcheckers, but is a spelling that refers to {{w|Queueing Theory}}, the study of queues. The present tense of queue should actually be "queuing".

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Sex]]