explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1347: t Distribution

2014-03-28T03:54:46Z

Jaxim: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1347
| date = March 26, 2014
| title = t Distribution
| image = t_distribution.png
| titletext = If data fails the Teacher's t test, you can just force it to take the test again until it passes.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Please don't remove this tag until language issues are solved. This is international, not only U.S.}}
The {{w|Student's t-distribution}} is a class of {{w|probability distribution}} used in statistics to model small sample sizes. "Student" was the pseudonym of {{w|William Gosset}}, an employee of Guinness Brewery who discovered it.

A Student's t distribution is similar to a normal symmetric bell curve distribution, but has "fatter tails"; thus, the one shown in the comic is roughly the right shape.

The comic is a play on the name "Student", the pseudonym of the creator versus the "Teacher". The idea is that a "teacher's" distribution would be more complex, and that it would be used for fitting data when the student's distribution wasn't sophisticated enough. Of course, in actuality, such a complex distribution as the one shown in the comic would have many parameters, and in practice would probably lead to overfitting and/or bias. Thus, the comic (and the title text) can be seen as making fun of the idea that more complex is always better, or perhaps of the idea that a statistician's job is to use more and more sophisticated tools to force the data to yield a "publishable" result, rather than to use the simplest appropriate tool and let the chips fall where they may.

In this comic, [[Cueball]] tries to "fit" a distribution to the data on the paper. This is the usual jargon for when a statistician is trying to model his/her data as coming from some underlying probability distribution, and the comic makes a pun with the physical meaning of "fit". In the second panel, Cueball decides that the Student's T distribution does not fit his data well (the data failed the Student t-test), and decides to pull out the more complex Teachers t-distribution instead (the teachers t-test - which the data is not allowed to continue to fail).

The students T distribution relates the average of a small sample to the "true" population average (under the assumptions, unobjectionable in many contexts, that there is such a "true" value, and that the samples are independent and normally distributed with equal variance). As such, unless the data on Cueball's paper contain many small groups which radically violate these assumptions somehow, there is no way Cueball's data could falsify the t distribution. In particular, a single number (for the average of one group) or a small set of numbers (for the averages of several numbers) will never make a nice smooth curve, but an average statistician would see that as normal statistical noise that would even out over time, not as a reason to prefer a complex, spiky curve such as the supposed "teacher's" distribution. But of course, Cueball's access to a secret, cooler-looking distribution makes them more badass than a mere average statistician... or does it?

Ironically, the Teacher's T Distribution shows equal variance, itself proving the appropriateness of the Student's T Distribution.

The title text plays on the word "test". The first part of the sentence refers to a potential "Teacher t-test" which would be used in a statistical context to test for the significance of some observation, as opposed to the real "Student's t-test" which is used to determine if two sets of data differ by a statistically significant amount. On the other hand, the second part of the sentence refers to the possibility for students to take tests (or exams) until they pass - or to teachers who forces students to take the test again and again until they pass. The resulting sentence may refer to statistical fallacy, or the (conscious or unconscious) action of manipulating observations or misconducting experiments to give statistical significance to a false fact.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is wobbling a bell-curved cutout labelled 'Student's T Distribution' on a piece of paper on a table]
:Cueball: Hmm

:[Cueball examines the paper]
:Cueball: ...Nope.

:[Cueball takes away the student's distribution cutout]

:[Cueball attempts to place a wider and far more complicated multi-modal cutout labelled 'Teacher's T Distribution' on the table]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

1137: RTL

2012-11-21T14:36:46Z

Jaxim: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 1137
| date = November 21, 2011
| title = ‮LTR
| image = rtl.png
| imagesize =
| titletext = Collaborative editing can quickly become a textual rap battle fought with increasingly convoluted invocations of U+202a to U+202e
}}

==Explanation==
U+202e is a {{w|unicode control characters|unicode control character}} that changes all proceeding text to right-to-left (RTL, as the title references). In the comic, [[Black Hat]] tires of [[Cueball]]'s complaining and inserts a U+202e character in the middle of Cueball's speech, turning his complaints into gibberish - sentences that must be read from right-to-left. U+202c returns text back to its normal direction.

When multiple writers work on the same text, arguments can often arise with some writers resorting to vandalizing the works of other writers. The title text takes this up a level, suggesting the use of U+202e and other direction control characters in editor wars to disrupt other people's work.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Black Hat. Cueball is standing. Black Hat is sitting down and using a laptop.]
:Cueball: And that's not even the worst part! The ''worst'' part is that—
:Black Hat: U+202e
:Cueball: ...neve t'ndid yehT— (Flipped translation = "— They didn't even...")
:Cueball: ?lleh eth tahW... (Flipped translation = "...What the hell??")
:Cueball: ...uoy did woH (Flipped translation = "How did you...")
:Cueball: .elohssA... (Flipped translation = "...Asshole.")

==Trivia==
* The title of the comic on the xkcd website actually has a U+202e character preceding it; when copied and pasted, the title of the comic actually reads "LTR". The page title is "xkcd: [U+202e]LTR", which causes Firefox to use "xkcd: xoferiF allizoM - RTL" as the window title. This also occurs in Chromium and Opera.
* There is a typo in the reverse text. "eth" corresponds to "hte" in stead of "the".

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

1137: RTL

2012-11-21T14:35:59Z

Jaxim: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1137
| date = November 21, 2011
| title = ‮LTR
| image = rtl.png
| imagesize =
| titletext = Collaborative editing can quickly become a textual rap battle fought with increasingly convoluted invocations of U+202a to U+202e
}}

==Explanation==
U+202e is a {{w|unicode control characters|unicode control character}} that changes all proceeding text to right-to-left (RTL, as the title references). In the comic, [[Black Hat]] tires of [[Cueball]]'s complaining and inserts a U+202e character in the middle of Cueball's speech, turning his complaints into gibberish - sentences that must be read from right-to-left. U+202c returns text back to its normal direction.

When multiple writers work on the same text, arguments can often arise with some writers resorting to vandalizing the works of other writers. The title text takes this up a level, suggesting the use of U+202e and other direction control characters in editor wars to disrupt other people's work.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Black Hat. Cueball is standing. Black Hat is sitting down and using a laptop.]
:Cueball: And that's not even the worst part! The ''worst'' part is that—
:Black Hat: U+202e
:Cueball: ...neve t'ndid yehT— (Flipped translation = "— They didn't even...")
:Cueball: ?lleh eth tahW... (Flipped translation = "What the hell??")
:Cueball: ...uoy did woH (Flipped translation = "How did you...")
:Cueball: .elohssA... (Flipped translation = "Asshole.")

==Trivia==
* The title of the comic on the xkcd website actually has a U+202e character preceding it; when copied and pasted, the title of the comic actually reads "LTR". The page title is "xkcd: [U+202e]LTR", which causes Firefox to use "xkcd: xoferiF allizoM - RTL" as the window title. This also occurs in Chromium and Opera.
* There is a typo in the reverse text. "eth" corresponds to "hte" in stead of "the".

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

1137: RTL

2012-11-21T14:35:34Z

Jaxim: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1137
| date = November 21, 2011
| title = ‮LTR
| image = rtl.png
| imagesize =
| titletext = Collaborative editing can quickly become a textual rap battle fought with increasingly convoluted invocations of U+202a to U+202e
}}

==Explanation==
U+202e is a {{w|unicode control characters|unicode control character}} that changes all proceeding text to right-to-left (RTL, as the title references). In the comic, [[Black Hat]] tires of [[Cueball]]'s complaining and inserts a U+202e character in the middle of Cueball's speech, turning his complaints into gibberish, sentences that must be read from right-to-left. U+202c returns text back to its normal direction.

When multiple writers work on the same text, arguments can often arise with some writers resorting to vandalizing the works of other writers. The title text takes this up a level, suggesting the use of U+202e and other direction control characters in editor wars to disrupt other people's work.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Black Hat. Cueball is standing. Black Hat is sitting down and using a laptop.]
:Cueball: And that's not even the worst part! The ''worst'' part is that—
:Black Hat: U+202e
:Cueball: ...neve t'ndid yehT— (Flipped translation = "— They didn't even...")
:Cueball: ?lleh eth tahW... (Flipped translation = "What the hell??")
:Cueball: ...uoy did woH (Flipped translation = "How did you...")
:Cueball: .elohssA... (Flipped translation = "Asshole.")

==Trivia==
* The title of the comic on the xkcd website actually has a U+202e character preceding it; when copied and pasted, the title of the comic actually reads "LTR". The page title is "xkcd: [U+202e]LTR", which causes Firefox to use "xkcd: xoferiF allizoM - RTL" as the window title. This also occurs in Chromium and Opera.
* There is a typo in the reverse text. "eth" corresponds to "hte" in stead of "the".

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

1137: RTL

2012-11-21T14:33:38Z

Jaxim: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 1137
| date = November 21, 2011
| title = ‮LTR
| image = rtl.png
| imagesize =
| titletext = Collaborative editing can quickly become a textual rap battle fought with increasingly convoluted invocations of U+202a to U+202e
}}

==Explanation==
U+202e is a {{w|unicode control characters|unicode control character}} that changes all proceeding text to right-to-left (RTL, as the title references). In the comic, [[Black Hat]] tires of [[Cueball]]'s complaining and inserts a U+202e character in the middle of Cueball's speech, turning his complaints into gibberish. U+202c returns text back to its normal direction.

When multiple writers work on the same text, arguments can often arise with some writers resorting to vandalizing the works of other writers. The title text takes this up a level, suggesting the use of U+202e and other direction control characters in editor wars to disrupt other people's work.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Black Hat. Cueball is standing. Black Hat is sitting down and using a laptop.]
:Cueball: And that's not even the worst part! The ''worst'' part is that—
:Black Hat: U+202e
:Cueball: ...neve t'ndid yehT— (Flipped translation = "— They didn't even...")
:Cueball: ?lleh eth tahW... (Flipped translation = "What the hell??")
:Cueball: ...uoy did woH (Flipped translation = "How did you...")
:Cueball: .elohssA... (Flipped translation = "Asshole.")

==Trivia==
* The title of the comic on the xkcd website actually has a U+202e character preceding it; when copied and pasted, the title of the comic actually reads "LTR". The page title is "xkcd: [U+202e]LTR", which causes Firefox to use "xkcd: xoferiF allizoM - RTL" as the window title. This also occurs in Chromium and Opera.
* There is a typo in the reverse text. "eth" corresponds to "hte" in stead of "the".

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