explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2892: Banana Prices

2024-02-09T21:04:31Z

Kittyabbygirl:

Is it a linear extrapolation? Or does it only appear so because the Y axis is logarithmic? Inflation is logarithmic, since it's expressed in percentages. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 17:04, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
:Well, the lines of extrapolation are (invoked as) linear, by dint of the height above the baseline being preconverted to a logarithmic function of the represented axial value. Rather than taking exponential-style extrapolation of data and 'happening' to linearise it through the subsequent transformation, it is almost certainly going to have been merely establishing some trend point(s) through which such an exponential would pass and using that to directly guide the linear plot that (on the converted scale) is the functionally equivalent result to doing it with ''every'' point. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.77|172.71.178.77]] 17:26, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

OK, so... my reading of the comic after studying it for a while is that Randall is making a sophisticated meta-joke about 'lying with data" and unreliable precision and how easy it is to be fooled. He knows, of course, that this graph's "prediction" is completely arbitrary and is likely to be VERY wrong. He is intentionally breaking a whole set of statistical best practices in this graph. If so, I think this comic is one of the most-layerd and subtle he's ever done. You have to know a lot about statistical best practices to see what he's really doing here. .. What's so interesting to me is him using the voice of the caption-writer -- usually good ol' reliable Randall -- to actually be the butt of the joke. ... If someone wants to claim that this is more sarcasm than "unreliable narrator," I guess that's a reasonable interpreation, but the use of the word "probably" in the caption makes me think we're supposed to take the caption-writer seriously. [[User:Laser813|Laser813]] ([[User talk:Laser813|talk]]) 18:38, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
:I don't know, I think meta-humor is typically reserved for the title text. I think the comic is a cheap gag about bananas and that the line will eventually become outdated, and and it's oversimplified so that the logic of his joke is clear. The caption is written in a similar speech style to the quote, and I think the title text is Randall's admission that the graph isn't the best. I don't think flaws in the graph are intentional as part of some humor on graph design, just a consequence of making the graph clear enough to not be distracting from the joke. [[User:Kittyabbygirl|Kittyabbygirl]] ([[User talk:Kittyabbygirl|talk]]) 21:04, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Bananas are a special case: Basically we have a monoculture. With no genetic variations, bananas are highly vulnerable to the emergence of specialized pathogens and currently Panama 4 is threatening the Cavendish banana: https://www.theguardian.com/food/ng-interactive/2022/apr/14/climate-crisis-food-systems-not-ready-biodiversity So trying to fit this question of "will it go extinct soon?" into a smooth inflation price increase might be another butt of the joke [[Special:Contributions/172.71.246.88|172.71.246.88]] 18:49, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Randall is way off-base here, by about an order of magnitude. The episode is about Bluth frozen bananas, which require refrigeration, chocolate, and custom labor; they also do not have the economies of scale of fresh bananas. The AD wiki says the prices are >$1; in "Top Banana," Maeby says they cost at least $1. In real life, frozen bananas cost $5 in LA, $8 at ice cream shops on LA-area beaches. This is a joke similar to the Pulp Fiction $5 milkshake; milkshakes have been much more expensive than that for years. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.207.149|172.70.207.149]] 19:12, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
: Randall sometimes ignores basic elements about how the real world works in order to make a nerdy joke or point. The comic last week about Black Hat being tracked 8,000 miles away by NIST is a good example of that. The whole thing rests on us entering into his (slightly) alternate universe with him. [[User:Laser813|Laser813]] ([[User talk:Laser813|talk]]) 20:37, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I am tempted to say "Keep the change." "What from a fiver." "Yes the world is going to end."
At the time of the radio series, it would have been an excessive amount of change to give away.
They did not keep it for the film, when a fiver would barely pay for one of the six beers.
[[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.23|172.69.195.23]] 19:38, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Talk:2839: Language Acquisition

2023-10-10T00:55:51Z

Kittyabbygirl:

It is probably obvious to say it, but: If the person in the title text is the same person speaking in the pane, there's a contradiction here, since if your first words were the seven unique words in "these were my first words what were yours" ("were" is duplicated) then "I learned another word today bringing my total up to twelve " adds another ten (duplicating "my"), for a total of seventeen. Or nineteen if you count "vocabulary" and "update." I'm not sure what to make of this, since Randall is surely aware of it. Perhaps I miss a subtlety. Or maybe the title text is spoken by a different character. [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 21:43, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
:The title text is often taken as coming from Randall. In the comic, Cueball is often a stand-in for Randall, but in this comic the text is coming from Baby Hairy. So the title text is contrasting the baby's first words with Randall's. Although they share the feature of being self-referential. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 23:48, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

A friend of mine said that his child's first words were "isi, äiti, kondesaattori" (dad, mom, capacitor). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.238.41|162.158.238.41]] 22:07, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Is the leftmost block schwa or upside down? The world may never know. [[User:Certified_nqh|Me]]<sup>[[[285: Wikipedian Protester|''citation needed'']]][[Category:Pages using the "citation needed" template]]</sup> 22:14, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
: Looks like it could be an upside down "e" ? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.207.89|172.70.207.89]] 23:07, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
:: Strange that it's lowercase, if so, given that the other blocks are not*. "ab..e.." I could see for learning blocks, or "AB..E..". Perhaps even capital vowels, lower-everything-else (notwithstanding the implied pretext that a child of the age to learn basic block-stacking motor skills is also going to sufficiently benefit from a grounding in such 'advanced' and nuanced character-recognition), but not that.
:::<nowiki>*</nowiki> - Logistically, for the full unique set of (A..Za..z), perhaps paired by case on opposite sides, you'd need nine blocks at a minimum (and then room for two repeats/punctuations/perhaps-'@'-and-'&'?). Just three blocks is already insufficient for all-upper, so the tropish illustration/posed-photo of three actual "ABC" blocks** always makes you wonder if there's no Z, Y, X, etc. Although perhaps 'd'+'p' (lowercase) or 'M'+'W' (uppercase, or lower, with the right font), or maybe 'E'+'M' (different font/style) could help reduce the number of sides needed, allowing some context by orientation.
:::<nowiki>**</nowiki> - And oh-so-often, correctly orientated, correctly sequenced and facing the observer that the toddler is also facing, which implies both a complete understanding of the glyphs ''and'' a sense of self-vs-other. Which is not far off as improbable as the preverbal 'infant genius' somehow presenting "SYZYGY"/whatever.
::OTOH, the populating of a set of blocks (far more than three!) with IPA begs questions of what capitals A and B are doing there. Or then there's the intriguing idea that these blocks are to specifically hothouse the child in Predicate Logic ("A" can perhaps be there for/additionally for "∀", seen upside-down, though somethjng like "E" should at least be present for the "∃").
::In short, odd child; likely already odder parents. Or ones that cobbled together blocks from different (second-hand, possibly incomplete) sets, as hand-me-downs, but that seems far too mundane an explanation for xKcD... ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.219|172.71.242.219]] 00:39, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
:::Azerbaijani has a capital schwa that looks like that: Ə [[Special:Contributions/172.70.223.177|172.70.223.177]] 00:50, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Re the rules (barring the contradiction said above): If Day 1 was "Another", Day 2 can't be "I learned" or "vocabulary word" unless the child skips some days and isn't learning at a rate of one word per day. If it's A Word A Day, your options must be just one other word - so in the example case, "word" could work to make "another word" work. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.2.39|162.158.2.39]] 23:14, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
:First word could be "I" (or "Learned") for "I learned" on the second day. I don't know the intention(s) of the person(s) who put together that section, but multiple paths to the dozen-word sentence are possible, perhaps it just needs to be indicated that these are not of the same sequence.
:There'll be many 'valid' sequences, with lesser or greater intermediate grammatical validity. 12!*(11!*10!*..3!*2!*1!) potential combinations. The 12! being the order of discovery; the other factorials are the orders of all intermediate sequences being rendered, but we actually know what sequence emerged from the 12! possibly renderings of the final set, so no need to repermutate that.
: That's without considering repeated words. If day 1 was just "Learned" (grammatically a stump, but give the kid a break!), Day 2 could easily be "I learned I". (Day 3 maybe "I learned another"/"I learned word", then "I learned another word" on day 4...) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.219|172.71.242.219]] 00:39, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Not sure if it’s a deliberate reference, but it reminds me of the factoid that, while ''Green Eggs and Ham'' only contains 50 unique words, a child who knows those 50 would realistically have to know several hundred (I can’t re-find the specific number). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.122.53|172.70.122.53]] 23:38, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

This kid somehow avoided the almost universal step of learning "dada" and "mama" (or similar words in other languages) as their first words. https://www.livescience.com/32191-why-are-mama-and-dada-a-babys-first-words.html [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 23:45, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

My attempt:

1 (vocabulary) = "Vocabulary!"

2 (update) = "Vocabulary update!"

3 (my) = "Update my vocabulary!"

4 (I) = "I update my vocabulary!"

5 (learned) = "Update: I learned my vocabulary" [or "I update my learned vocabulary"]

6 (to) = "I learned to update my vocabulary"

7 (word) = "I learned to update my word vocabulary"

8 (another) = "Update to my vocabulary: I learned another word"

9 (bringing) = "Update: bringing another word to my vocabulary, I learned"

10 (today)= "Update: I learned today, bringing another word to my vocabulary."

11 (total) = "Update: I learned today, bringing another word to my total vocabulary."

12 (twelve) = "Vocabulary update: I learned another word today, bringing my total to twelve."

[[User:Kittyabbygirl|Kittyabbygirl]] ([[User talk:Kittyabbygirl|talk]]) 23:51, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Why does the number of words uttered have to be the same as the number of the day? If that's just a rule that's been invented for this game, then fair enough - be as arbitrary as you like. Otherwise though, that's not implied anywhere.[[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 23:57, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

My attempt at the first eleven days:

Word

Another word

Update: Another word

My update: another word

My update: another vocabulary word

My update today: another vocabulary word

Update to my vocabulary: another word today

Another word update to my total vocabulary today

Bringing another word update to my total vocabulary today

Bringing another word update to my total learned vocabulary today

Update: I learned vocabulary today, bringing another word to my total.

(I assumed that the child provides one of these updates every day and used that as the topic of the sentences, and I allowed for the kinds of omissions seen in casual adult speech ("[I am] going to the store; do you need anything?"). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.161|162.158.158.161]] 00:03, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Talk:2839: Language Acquisition

2023-10-09T23:53:27Z

Kittyabbygirl: Tweaked order

Talk:2839: Language Acquisition

2023-10-09T23:51:30Z

Kittyabbygirl: My attempt at the puzzle