Talk:2376: Curbside

2023-07-20T18:27:30Z

LoquaciousLlama: commented on beret guy's use of !? which is atypical

A possible xkcd universe? Are there any other in universe references?
[[Special:Contributions/172.69.35.119|172.69.35.119]] 23:25, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Is this the first time we've seen Beret Guy actually angry? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.170|108.162.210.170]] 02:03, 24 October 2020 (UTC)
:I can think of at least one other time: [[559: No Pun Intended]] [[User:BlackHat|BlackHat]] ([[User talk:BlackHat|talk]]) 16:28, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Please don't be childish, everyone. (Talking to someone else)

Beret Guy was probably angry in https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/677:_Asshole. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.198|172.69.34.198]] 16:26, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

I like how Beret guy is trying to get the shop owner to remove a cursed object from the shop... which would probably forever separate the shop owner from his shop & stick the shop owner with the cursed object.

Does the title text actually imply that people are getting COVID at the shop? It says outright that contract tracers are going in, yes, but..? [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 04:35, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't believe that the comic needs any more explanation. Does anyone else think otherwise? [[User:BlackHat|BlackHat]] ([[User talk:BlackHat|talk]]) 18:55, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

The importance of a comma. --[[User:Char Latte49|Char Latte49]] ([[User talk:Char Latte49|talk]]) 19:46, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

I think it should be noted somewhere that this is beret guy's only use of "!?" and also arguably the time his motives are most understandable — also, can his mother even catch covid with her plutonium heart? (My first time posting here so I don't know if I'm doing it right) [[User:LoquaciousLlama|LoquaciousLlama]] ([[User talk:LoquaciousLlama|talk]]) 18:27, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

904: Sports

2023-07-20T16:13:34Z

LoquaciousLlama: fixed a typo (faction->fraction)

{{comic
| number = 904
| date = May 27, 2011
| title = Sports
| image = sports.png
| titletext = Also, all financial analysis. And, more directly, D&D.
}}

==Explanation==
A random number generator is any object or program that arbitrarily selects and produces a number from within a pre-defined range of numbers. For example, a single six-sided die will produce any integer between 1 and 6, inclusive. In an unweighted random number generator, every number that it can possibly produce has the same odds of coming up. When rolling a single {{w|Dice#Manufacturing|precision die}}, for instance, there is an equal chance of rolling a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. Conversely, in a weighted random number generator, some numbers are more likely to come up than others. For example, when rolling two dice, a seven is far more likely to come up than a two, as there are six possible ways to roll a seven but only one way to roll a two.

All sports generate numbers that are inherently random. Home runs, goals, sacks, passes, shots, hits, misses, errors, and many more such statistics are generated in every match of every sports game. The rules of the particular sport, as well as the skill of the participants, introduces bias toward certain values; hence, sports matches are weighted random number generators.

If the generator is weighted to favor a specific team in a specific game, that is discussed. Then the results of the game (more random numbers) are discussed. It's the discussion that is the narrative part. If a player breaks a record, that becomes part of the narrative. The number is random, but weighted because of player skill or the rules of the sport.

{{w|College athletics|College sports}} in the US are especially prone to this kind of narrative-first journalism with their penchant for using more arbitrary systems of placement to determine postseason play than professional sports which have almost all standardized their systems around sometimes highly complicated metrics to determine who reaches the postseason. Prime examples of this are the new ''{{w|College Football Playoff}}'' which has a committee release polls every week after Week 9 of the college football season, with the top four teams in the final poll playing for the championship, and ''{{w|March Madness}}'' where a similar committee ranks the top 68 teams in the country in a bracket for the championship tournament. The old ''{{w|Bowl Championship Series}}'', which determined the NCAA Division I college football champion from 1998 to 2013, literally used computers generating numbers and algorithms based on team performance as a heavy part of their ranking systems that determined which two teams played for the championship at the end of the season.

The title text applies this to financial/stock results/forecasts as well and, most appropriately, to ''{{w|Dungeons & Dragons}}'' (''D&D''), a tabletop role-playing game. In ''D&D'' the players and {{w|Dungeon Master}} are forging a narrative about the characters and world they have collectively made up; the players all decide on courses of action (such as negotiating with townspeople, intimidating nobles, attacking monsters, to name a tiny fraction of possibilities) and whether they succeed is determined by rolling dice of various numbers of sides. The numerical results are woven into a narrative by the Dungeon Master.

This strip is one of several in which [[Randall]] affectionately trivializes sports (see for instance [[1107: Sports Cheat Sheet]], [[1480: Super Bowl]] and [[1507: Metaball]]).

==Transcript==
:[Two Cueball like commentators sit behind a desk.]
:Commentator to the left: A weighted random number generator just produced a new batch of numbers.
:Commentator to the right: Let's use them to build narratives!
:[Caption below the panel:]
:All sports commentary

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Sport]]

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2376: Curbside

904: Sports