explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1332: Slippery Slope

2025-04-14T23:51:11Z

Lumpman2: redundant sentence

{{comic
| number = 1332
| date = February 19, 2014
| title = Slippery Slope
| image = slippery_slope.png
| titletext = Sure, taking a few seconds to be respectful toward someone about something they care about doesn't sound hard. But if you talk to hundreds of people every day and they all start expecting that same consideration, it could potentially add up to MINUTES wasted. And for WHAT?
}}

==Explanation==
In the comic, [[White Hat]] uses a fallacious argument to [[Cueball]] to justify being inconsiderate to people. He argues that if he expends minor effort being considerate to one person, he will be expected to be considerate to everyone he meets, which - he wishes to argue - is an undesirable situation. Thus, he justifies being inconsiderate as a form of avoiding the "slippery slope".

"{{w|Slippery slope}}" argumentation is an informal fallacy that takes the form of "if A happens, then B will follow as a minor but expected consequence. B will lead on to C, C leads onto D, and so on. Each consequence gets progressively worse until an undesirable situation is reached." A slippery slope argument proposes that A should not be allowed, because if it is, then the resulting chain of consequences will inevitably lead to the undesirable situation.

This idea is extended in the title text, where he continues extrapolating the train of thought to conclude that minutes of time would be "wasted". Rather than condemning the slippery slope fallacy per se, [[Randall]]'s point here seems to be more that White Hat's priorities are callous to the point of sociopathy. All people desire to be treated with consideration and respect,{{actual citation needed}} and taking a few seconds to acknowledge another's feelings is (for most well-meaning people) a small price to pay for improving that person's day, or at least not making it any worse than it needs to be. As such, these seconds would not be "wasted" at all, but would be actively making the world a friendlier place. White Hat's hyperfixation on not wasting time appears ludicrous given how much good feeling he could contribute to the world for so little of his own time. (White Hat also appears to be discounting the possibility that being considerate towards others will encourage reciprocity, which could result in SAVING him time since they will be more willing to help him out should he ever find himself in need.)

==Transcript==
:[White Hat talking to Cueball.]
:White Hat: Yeah, but if I'm considerate toward one person about one thing, what's next?
:White Hat: Being nice to ''other'' people about ''other'' things?
:White Hat: Where does it ''end?''

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Logic]]
[[Category:Social interactions]]

1784: Bad Map Projection: Liquid Resize

2024-10-20T19:42:39Z

Lumpman2: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1784
| date = January 11, 2017
| title = Bad Map Projection: Liquid Resize
| image = bad_map_projection_liquid_resize.png
| titletext = This map preserves the shapes of Tissot's indicatrices pretty well, as long as you draw them in before running the resize.
}}

==Explanation==
This is the first comic in the series of [[:Category:Bad Map Projections|Bad Map Projections]] presenting Bad map projection #107: The Liquid Resize. This turned into a series when [[1799: Bad Map Projection: Time Zones]] (#79), was released just a bit more than a month after this one.

There is no perfect way to draw a map of the world on a flat piece of paper. Each one will introduce a different type of distortion, and the best projection for a given situation is sometimes disputed. [[Randall]] previously explored 12 different projections in [[977: Map Projections]], and expressed his disdain for some types he sees as less efficient but whose users feel superior. None of them are truly perfect as any 2D map projection will always distort in a way the spherical reality, and a map projection that is useful for one aspect (like navigation, geographical shapes and masses visualization, etc.) will not be so for all the others. Local maps of smaller areas can be quite accurate, but the idea of both these map projection comics is to map the entire globe on a flat surface.

There are many other projections than the 12 from the previous map projection comic, and Randall seems to have listed at least 358 under the label "Bad Map Projections." The ''Liquid Resize'' map projection is not only useless for most map applications -- as the size, shape, and position of most countries are very distorted -- but its creation includes two steps which are outright counterproductive.

First, this method needs a planar map projection as its starting point, thus compounding the problems right off the bat. Planar projections are relatively accurate near the center but heavily distorted toward the edges. A famous example of a planar projection is the logo of the {{w|United Nations}}. Planar projections are basically only useful for 3D graphics rendering, if the user needs a quick, inexpensive way to store map textures that will later be attached to a sphere.

Second, the map uses [https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/content-aware-scaling.html Photoshop's content aware resizing tool], a very questionable choice.{{citation needed}} The content aware resizing tool resizes images by identifying what it thinks are important details and preserving these, while shrinking or stretching less detailed areas. For example, [http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/710073-content-aware-scaling when used on a face], the algorithm detects that the eyes and mouth are important details and tries to keep these in place, while stretching the skin around it. When applied to a map, this means that areas with lots of countries - and therefore lots of detail - such as Europe, West Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and Central America/the Caribbean are relatively unchanged, while big countries like India, China and the US are very warped. The choices that the resizing tool makes are also dependent on the exact visual features of the original map, such as the choice of not having any topography or infrastructure drawn on, or not including a latitude/longitude grid, so what areas are deemed as unimportant is even more arbitrary than it would be on, say, a photographic picture of the Earth.

[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/content-aware-scaling Bad content aware scaling] is already a meme. This projection does do a good job, however, of making almost every country clearly visible and indicating which countries are neighbors. Using a Photoshop tool for a task it is not intended for was also used in [[1685: Patch]] where a GNU patch tool was replaced with Adobe Photoshop's patch tool to compile code.

South America would fit into Africa almost as it did in the era of the super-continent {{w|Pangaea}}, but the shape of Brazil is morphed around in preserving the island nation {{w|São Tomé and Principe}}.

{{w|Tissot's indicatrices}} are equally sized small circles overlaid on a globe to show the distortion of a particular map projection; if the map distortion distorts the shapes or areas of countries, it will do the same to the circles. The title text suggests that the shapes of Tissot's indicatrices would be pretty well preserved by the Liquid Resize transformation, 'as long as you draw them in before running the resize'. This is a joke. "Drawing them in before running the resize" means that a different projection would be generated (probably preserving the indicatrices themselves), making the use of the indicatrices meaningless, sort of like cheating. In fact by drawing them small enough there will be no resizing at all.

It is unknown if Randall would include common map projections like those in [[977: Map Projections]] among his "Bad Map Projections". It would be reasonable to do so, since all 2D projections of the surface of a 3D sphere will be bad in certain respects. The next comic's projections ''Time Zones'' has #79, and could be concluded as being less bad than this one, which also seems realistic as that map has a slighly more reasonably use case than this one.

==Transcript==
:[Caption at the top of the panel:]
:Bad map projection #107:
:<big>The <big>Liquid Resize</big></big>
:A political map compressed using Photoshop's content-aware resizing algorithm to cut down on unused blank space

:[Below the caption there is a map of the world divided and colored by political boundaries, with outlines around each continent in black and around each country in dark gray. Antarctica is colored in light gray, bodies of water in white, and countries in pale shades of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. The map is heavily distorted, with Africa in the center and the other continents curving around it, approximating the bounds of a square with rounded corners. The oceans have been removed but also huge countries like the US, Australia, Brazil, Russia and especially India and Argentina have been heavily distorted while areas in the center with many smaller countries like Africa and Europe is almost unchanged.]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Bad Map Projections]]

2887: Minnesota

2024-01-29T22:58:51Z

Lumpman2:

{{comic
| number = 2887
| date = January 29, 2024
| title = Minnesota
| image = minnesota_2x.png
| imagesize = 673x260px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = In addition to 'squishy', after reviewing my submitted intraplate ground motion data, the National Geodetic Survey has politely asked me to stop using the word 'supple' so often when describing Midwestern states.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a CONCERNED SHORTENED MINNESOTA RESIDENT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

[[Hairy]], [[Ponytail]], and [[Cueball]] are in a business meeting of an unknown nature, but one which (it transpires) is unrelated to either geography, geology or geopolitical boundaries. Hairy asks if anyone has any other concerns, a common enough question to ask when trying to ensure that nobody at the meeting has still something to say that had not already been covered directly by the agenda or the resulting discussions.

Cueball voices an opinion on Minnesota. Due to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound post-glacial rebound] present in Minnesota, this US state is apparently slowly decreasing in size. The humor comes from the fact that this may be a genuine concern by Cueball, but is completely unrelated to the topic of the meeting nor even a very significant problem even in more relevant circles.{{cn}} And yet Cueball clearly finds it important enough that "all meetings should be about Minnesota" until the problem is solved.

The title text implies that Cueball has also brought this issue up to the {{w|National Geodetic Survey}}; rather than commenting on his data or findings, they have simply requested that he stop using suggestive language in his papers ("supple" is sometimes used, especially in erotic literature, to describe certain body parts).

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[Hairy standing in front of Ponytail and Cueball, who are sitting behind a desk]
:Hairy: Does anyone have any other concerns?
:Cueball: I'm concerned that Minnesota is getting shorter.

:[A map of Minnesota beside Cueball, with arrows pointing from the northern and southern borders towards the middle]
:Cueball: Because of post-glacial crust rebound, the northern border is moving toward the southern border. It's less than an inch a decade, but I still don't like it.
:Cueball: Minnesota shouldn't be squishy.

:[Hairy again standing in front of Ponytail and Cueball at the desk. Ponytail is looking at Cueball, whose finger is now raised in the air, gesturing]
:Hairy: Okay. Does anyone have any concerns related to the topic of this meeting?
:Cueball: All meetings should be about Minnesota until we resolve this.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Geography]]

2848: Breaker Box

2023-11-01T21:52:36Z

Lumpman2:

{{comic
| number = 2848
| date = October 30, 2023
| title = Breaker Box
| image = breaker_box_2x.png
| imagesize = 560x776px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Any electrician will warn you to first locate and flip the house's CAUSALITY circuit breaker before touching the CIRCUIT BREAKERS one.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a HIGH-PITCHED HUM GENERATOR THAT WAS LAST MENTIONED EXACTLY 1258 COMICS AGO - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
A {{w|distribution board}}, referred to as a "breaker box" here and also commonly referred to as a "fuse box", "breaker panel", "DB box", and many other names, is a metal box attached to a wall, usually in some maintenance area, containing multiple {{w|circuit breakers}} that distribute electricity to various parts of the building. A circuit breaker is an electrical switch, usually in the form of a small lever that can be used to manually isolate the electrical connections it controls from the incoming power supply. These breakers are designed to automatically open if too much electrical current flows through them. This is a safety measure to reduce the risk of damage, fire or electrocution in the event of a short circuit or higher load being asked for than the wires are rated to handle.

In breaker boxes, each individual breaker is ideally labeled to let the operator know what that specific breaker controls. Typically, the circuit controlled by each breaker will feed an intuitive set of connections: a certain room, or set of rooms, or possibly a set of related services (like overhead lights, or all the outlets on one floor). Some large appliances will have a dedicated circuit and breaker.

However, in houses that have been rewired multiple times (or are poorly wired), this can quickly become overcomplicated with seemingly random connections. Randall lives in Boston where much of the housing stock is from the late 1800s and early 1900s, and he is likely to live in a house with non-ideal wiring, which may have inspired this comic.

The comic satirizes these complex wiring setups, with multiple breakers "controlling" arbitrary things, including some that – in the classic style of XKCD – are puns on the word "breaker" or may be impossible to hook a breaker up to, getting progressively more absurd to the point of "breaking" certain laws of physics.

===Table of the breaker labels===
{|class = "wikitable"
! Label next to breaker !! Explanation !! Note
|-
! colspan="3"|Left column of switches
|-
| Kitchen lights || The lights in the kitchen. || rowspan="3"| Standard items that could be separate
|-
| Living room lights || The lights in the living room.
|-
| Porch lights || The lights on the porch.
|-
| Bathroom lights and one surprise mystery outlet somewhere || The lights in the bathroom, but also a random outlet.
It is not uncommon for the power supplies to bathrooms (and other rooms with water connections) to be on a separate circuit. This is because water can potentially cause a short circuit, resulting in the breaker opening, and separate circuits minimize the impact and makes the problem easier to locate.

Having initially reserved an output from the box for such a limited use, it is possible that another electrician – while adding wiring – chooses to wire seemingly unrelated things into the same circuit. This may make sense (for example, an outlet near a sink or some other water source could reasonably be grouped with the bathroom), or it may simply be out of convenience. In either case, future residents and installers may not be informed of this, and therefore wouldn't realize that the outlet is grouped with that circuit.
| Standard, but 'kludged'
|-
| North-facing appliances || colspan="2"|Peculiar and a bit complex to execute. Here's how it might have been set up:
# Install a breaker switch that is actually a mechanical switch to control a smart home automation instead of its normal function
# Replace relevant normal outlets with Wi-Fi-controlled smart outlets
# Use smart home software to create a custom group of all outlets that control all ''north-facing appliances''
# Set up a software automation to selectively toggle this user-defined group of smart outlets when triggered.
* Adding a matching appliance to the house would require editing the automation.

Alternative explanations:
* The switch may be physically wired only to outlets installed on a southern wall in the property (or ''all'' southern walls, for each room that requires them), and you'd ensure that everything connected to these exclusively north-facing outlets also faces directly away from the wall(s).
* The switch could control appliances on the north-facing walls of the house.

Note: "North-facing" has broad interpretation, as lax as northeast to northwest or as strict as {{w|Points of the compass#32-wind compass rose|north by east to north by west}}. It could also be as exact as perfect north, but this would render this breaker completely functionless unless an appliance happens to be ever-so-perfectly aligned.

|-
| Bathtub drain light || colspan="2"|Bathtub drains typically do not have lights, but this breaker provides power to that and only that. Why it isn't already considered a "bathroom light" is unexplained (unless it's for the bit of the pipe that is ''external'' to that room).

It obviously cannot be the "surprise mystery outlet" already referred to earlier as being covered under the switch for the bathroom lights, much apart from it not being a socket/outlet.
|-
| Appliances whose names contain the letter "F" || colspan="2"|Another odd and amusing specification.

To make it work, one might use the "North-facing appliances" setup described above, but just with a different custom group of Wi-Fi-controlled smart outlets chosen to only control appliances with an "F' in their name.

Some common household appliances (kitchen and elsewhere) that this switch might control:
* coffee maker
* refrigerator
* freezer
* fan
* air fryer
* food processor
* waffle iron
* fabric steamer
* fireplace (electric)
|-
| {{w|Hot water heater}} || Usually just a heater that creates (and typically stores) hot water. But given that the next breaker controls the "Regular water heater", this breaker might actually control a water heater that pointlessly heats water that is ''already'' hot.
This is probably a joke about the fact that the common phrase "hot water heater" is [[technically]] redundant or misleading:
* Redundant because the simpler term "water heater" is enough to describe a device that produces hot water.
* Misleading because it's not the purpose of residential water heaters to heat water that is ''already'' hot.

Trivia: In some languages, "hot water" is a separate, single word, so "hot-water heater" is accurate.
|rowspan="2"|Two "heaters"
|-
| Regular water heater || The heater for regular water. In context with the switch above, this label presumes it's for a heater for heating water that is not yet hot (usually called a "hot water heater", hence the joke). Alternatively, if we assume that a ''hot water heater'' is for ''making'' hot water, this heater must be for making “regular water”, whatever temperature that may mean.
|-
| Outlets in rooms that it's normal to eat pizza in || colspan="2"|This controls every outlet in rooms that it's normal to eat pizza in, such as the dining room and kitchen and – depending on the "normal" habits of the inhabitants – other rooms such as the bedroom, bathroom, or living room (if not already covered by the "living room lights" switch above). Closets and single-purpose rooms such as the laundry room are presumably not included.
|-
| High-pitched hum generator || colspan="2"|Controls a high-pitched hum generator. This is a call-back to [[1590: The Source]], which was released just over 8 years before this comic.
|-
| The solution to the cryptogram below: || colspan="2"|Likely a pun on a "code breaker," something or someone that solves a code, such as this cryptogram, a type of puzzle where a sentence has been encoded using a cipher, usually simple, and the goal is to determine the cipher and recover the original sentence from the encoded one.
2 other explanations:
* The identity of the electrical load sourced from this breaker can be found by solving the cryptogram.
* This switch enables or disables the code's solution somehow, perhaps toggling its knowability or solvability or turning on a computer for solving cryptograms.
|-
| Bugs || colspan="2"|Several interpretations are possible:
* Disable all software bugs in the house*
* Disable all insect bugs in the house – as an efficient form of pest control – perhaps using ultrasonic emitters that drive away bugs (may be a reference to [[2753: Air Handler]]) – or perhaps the house contains noise machines that play sounds of insects or other ways of simulating insects.
* Disable power to all covert listening devices, which would be able to be switched off if wired into the house's electrical grid.
* Disable the whole global category of bugs (insects, arachnids, and other small arthropods), in which case we'd have no more pests and we'd reduce disease like malaria and {{w|Lyme disease}}! Of course, food webs would also collapse, and our world would be overrun with waste.
<nowiki>*</nowiki>Though it's unlikely that it's what Randall is referring to, computer bugs switches actually exist. It's a feature in some video game emulators to either run an unofficial patched version or to stay true to the original system, for example to allow bug-exploit speedruns of a video game.
|-
! colspan="3"|Right column of switches
|-
| A whirring fan you didn't realize was on until now || colspan="2"|Fans generally produce a steady, low-level 'white' noise that people generally stop noticing. When such a fan is turned off, the absence of that noise is quickly noticed. Shutting down a fan that you didn't realize was running could be worrisome for a couple of reasons: it could be serving an important function (like HVAC or server cooling) and cause a problem when it's off, or it may be a fan that wasn't supposed to be running, but had been for some time with being noticed.
|-
| Dishwasher || colspan="2"|Although dishwashers aren't typically high-load appliances that require a breaker to themselves (unlike, for example, the water heater), if the house wasn't originally built with a dishwasher in mind, it is likely new wiring had to be added during its installation, resulting in a breaker that exclusively controls the dishwasher.

Though what "dishwasher" actually means may depend on what the "dishes" of the next switch might be, and thus what additional device may be required to ensure they remain clean. Even at the more trivial end of the interpretation (though not then explaining the following "dishes"), a busy restaurant might have an employee section equipped exclusively for the dishwashing role and separately supplied with power in a similar manner to that suggested for the bathroom.
|-
| Dishes || colspan="2"|Likely a pun on being a "breaker of dishes." Or the switch powers/controls two or more satellite dishes.

Traditionally, dishes cannot be turned off, as they do not normally require electricity, outside of certain novelty dishes with battery-powered LEDs.
|-
| Hallway lights || The lights in the hallway or hallways. || rowspan="3"|"Hallway" regions
|-
| Hallway outlets || The outlets in the hallway or hallways. A common confusion when turning off breakers is separate wiring for outlets and lights in the same room. Though having the room go dark is a good mnemonic that it is unpowered, it is not a guarantee, and indeed, wiring them separately allows working on the outlets without having to do it in the dark.
|-
| Hallway floors || This breaker has several potential interpretations:
#A master switch for all floors (stories) in the building which include hallways, e.g. the guestroom areas in a hotel, whilst possibly excluding the lobby and service levels
#Outlets in the floor
#Electric underfloor heating (heated bathroom floors are a feature in some houses)
#Electrification of the floors -- not common outside of horror and heist movies
#Disabling all floors entirely, so everything resting on the floors falls through
|-
| Social media || colspan="2"|This breaker also has several potential interpretations of "turning off social media":
#'Digital detoxes', where someone says "I'm going to turn off my social media" and intends to deny themselves access to all their social media apps.
#A switch for a parent to turn off all social media entering the house to protect their kids and themselves, which references a type of specialized content filter available through Wi-Fi router settings, not traditionally a breaker box.
#A callback to [[908: The Cloud]]. Since most social media platforms are centralized services, it would be theoretically possible to hook up a switch to the main power supply of every server building at once, given some extremely long wires, a breaker capable of handling the abhorrently massive electric load, and agreement from every social media provider([[1439|optional]]).
#The theoretical desire by some to "turn off social media" for the world due to its harmful effects on society. As someone who lived before social media and saw its spread over two decades, Randall may be ruing the impacts of social media on civilization and channeling his desire to put the genie back in the bottle.
#A play on the phrase “breaking the internet”, meaning going viral on social media.
|-
| State law || Likely a pun on "State Law Breaker."
Taken literally, it would either disable enforcement of State Law or nullify every single one, creating a state of lawlessness similar to the premise of the popular movie, "The Purge". It's unclear if this refers to Randall's state of Massachusetts or State Law as a general concept.

If the switch just nullifies State Law within the confines of the house, that would make the home a place where State Law could be broken without consequence, with some exciting implications:
* '''No More Licenses''': Practice medicine, law, or cut hair without the need of a license!
* '''The Ultimate Man Cave or She Shed''': Pet lion, or maybe a nuclear reactor in the basement.
* '''24/7 Parties''': No noise complaints. Late-night parties with blaring music can continue indefinitely.
* '''Tax-Free Zone''': Sell goods from the home without any sales tax.
* '''Unusual Living Arrangements''': OK to live with 50 other people in a 2-bedroom house, with no zoning laws or housing regulations.
* '''DIY Everything''': All those building codes and safety regulations wouldn't apply. OK to install an indoor waterfall or convert the living room into a beach.
* '''Gambling House''': Turn the living room into a full-blown casino, no license needed.
* '''Ultimate Privacy''': No worries about warrantless searches. State law enforcement would have no jurisdiction inside your house.
| rowspan="2"|"Legal" items
|-
| Federal law || Likely a pun on "Federal Law Breaker," though it could also be taken literally, as above.

The ramifications of nullifying every US Federal law are immense. Disabling Federal Law while keeping State Law would theoretically fulfill the goals of the "States Rights" advocates, groups of conservatives across US history aiming to return Federal power to the States.

If the switch just nullifies Federal Law within the confines of the house, there could be some fun results:

* Alternative Currency Operations: Inhabitants could craft their own monetary system, designing and printing their own currency.
* Endangered Species Game Park: The house could become a zone for hunting creatures federally recognized as endangered or protected, like the bald eagle, making it a place to shoot or trap rare wildlife.
* Exotic Collection Hub: With federal import restrictions made moot, the house could transform into a repository for exotic items otherwise forbidden at a national level -- a potential trove of rare fruits, plants, or artifacts.
* Tax-free Commercial Zone: Any enterprise operating entirely within the house's boundaries is free from federal income taxation.
* Experimental Culinary Experiences: Free from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) constraints, the house could offer dishes using ingredients or preparations not federally approved.
|-
| Second law of thermodynamics || The {{w|Second Law of Thermodynamics}} means that things naturally move from order to disorder over time. It also says you can't take heat from a place that's cooler and use it to heat up another place, unless you use some energy to do it. In short, without adding energy, only the hotter place can warm up the cooler one.

Turning off (or breaking) the second law of thermodynamics would have some pros and cons.
;GOOD STUFF
*'''Perpetual Motion Machines''': Machines that can do work indefinitely without an energy source would become possible, defying our current understanding of energy conservation.
*'''Reversibility of Processes''': Many natural processes that are irreversible under current laws could be reversed. For instance, melted ice could spontaneously turn back into a solid without energy removal.
*'''Recycling Energy''': We could theoretically use the same quantum of energy over and over again, leading to ultra-efficient systems and potentially solving many of the world's energy problems.
*'''Reversing Entropy-Driven Processes''': Things like mixing cream and coffee or ink in water could spontaneously unmix.
;BAD STUFF
*'''End Life as We Know It:''' All living organisms rely on the second law for crucial processes, including metabolism and reproduction. If the second law were negated, life, at least as we understand it, might not be possible.
*'''No Heat Engines:''' Engines rely on the flow of heat from hotter to colder bodies. Without the Second Law, our cars, power plants, refrigerators, and many other devices would not function.
*'''Breakdown of Molecular Processes:''' Molecules spontaneously move from areas of higher to lower concentration due to entropy. Without this, diffusion, osmosis, and many biochemical reactions wouldn't occur as they currently do.
*'''Loss of Directionality:''' One interpretation of the Second Law provides a directionality to time (the so-called "arrow of time"). Without it, causality and our understanding of past, present, and future could be fundamentally altered.
*'''Unpredictable Outcomes:''' Turning off the Second Law could result in a universe where outcomes are not probabilistically predictable. You couldn't rely on anything happening as it "should," leading to chaos in every sense.
This law of physics was also explored in the What If? article [https://what-if.xkcd.com/145/ Fire From Moonlight].
| rowspan="3"|"Physics" items
|-
| Friction || {{w|Friction}} is the resistive force that opposes the relative motion or tendency of such motion of two surfaces in contact. Turning it off has some upsides and downsides.
;UPSIDES
*'''Perpetual Motion Machines:''' Without friction, once an object starts moving, it would continue indefinitely unless acted upon by another force.
*'''Super-Efficient Transport:''' Cars, trains, and other vehicles would glide effortlessly once set into motion, leading to immense energy savings.
*'''Unique Sports:''' New sports and activities would emerge, where players glide or slide over surfaces without friction.
;DOWNSIDES
*'''Walking Would Be Impossible:''' We rely on friction between our feet and the ground to move. Without it, we would be unable to walk, run, or even stand.
*'''No Manual Dexterity:''' Holding, grabbing, or manipulating objects would be very difficult, because they would be perfectly slippery.
*'''Catastrophic Mechanical Failures:''' Many machines rely on friction to function. Brakes in cars, for instance, use friction to slow down and stop the vehicle. Without it, uncontrollable accidents would occur.
*'''No Sound:''' Friction between air molecules creates sound waves. Without friction, the world would be silent (some may consider this an upside).
*'''Breathing Difficulties:''' Our respiratory system relies on frictional forces when the alveoli in our lungs exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide with the bloodstream.
*'''Hard to Light Fire:''' Lighting a fire by striking a match would no longer work, because it relies on friction. However, there are other methods for starting a fire that don't require friction, [https://www.wikihow.com/Create-Fire-With-a-Magnifying-Glass the most famous of which just requires a magnifying glass].
*'''Collisions:''' Objects, once set in motion, would continue to move until they hit something, leading to a myriad of unpredictable and uncontrollable collisions.
Being in a frictionless environment (and a vacuum, as physicists love...) was the subject of [[669: Experiment]].
|-
| Gravity || {{w|Gravity}} is a natural force that attracts two bodies toward each other, proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers.
Turning off gravity would have some advantages and disadvantages.
;ADVANTAGES
* '''Flight''': Without gravity, every leap could turn into a flight. We could push off surfaces and float effortlessly through the air.
* '''No Weight Restrictions''': Large structures could be built without concern for weight-bearing loads. This would drastically change engineering and architectural designs.
* '''New Sports''': Zero-gravity sports and activities could become a reality on Earth. Imagine playing basketball or soccer without gravity!
;DISADVANTAGES
* '''Flight''': Without gravity, every leap turns into a flight... right out of the atmosphere of the Earth, and directly into space.
* '''Loss of Atmosphere and Oceans''': Without gravity, Earth's atmosphere would dissipate into space, and water from oceans, rivers, and lakes would float away, making life as we know it impossible.
* '''Unanchored Chaos''': Everything not fixed to the ground, including people, animals, vehicles, and foundationless structures, could become airborne, causing massive destruction and chaos.
* '''Disruption of Celestial Order''': Earth would no longer orbit the Sun, the Moon would drift away rather quickly, and the structural integrity of the universe, including galaxies and solar systems, would be jeopardized.
* '''Everything Exploding''': Most celestial bodies, ranging from the moon to supermassive black holes, would explode from internal pressure and centripetal forces no longer fighting against gravity, throwing everything into space.
* '''Aggregation Absence''': Stars, galaxies, and basically anything in space requires gravity to form. Without gravity, no stars, planets, or meteors would form ever again.

Of course, if this switch is turned off, it may simply mean that objects within the house itself are no longer subject to gravity. This would be '''''far''''' less cataclysmic, and as a bonus, this would make it much, much easier to move around the house, get to higher areas, and move objects, but could prove to cause some problems once the breaker is turned back on, especially for the floor.
|-
| Circuit breakers || colspan="2"|Possibly the "master" breaker, controlling the main circuit that supplies power to all other circuit breakers. However, given the other surreal things this breaker box controls, turning it off may possibly make it impossible to turn it on ever again as the switch will no longer function once switched off (i.e.: If this was turned off, it would presumably turn off the functionality of the circuit breaker itself, if it was wired to include itself).

Moreover, if this circuit breaker disables all circuit breakers everywhere, it would result in global infrastructure collapse, halting essential services, including transportation, healthcare, and communication, and leading to widespread chaos.

Note that it might be a perfectly valid label if it refers to multiple subsidiary 'boxes', cascaded off this particular one, each containing one or more additional breakers for convenience or safety. e.g. units dedicated to a shed, garage or workshop room which save the need to traipse all the way to this box's utility cupboard location in the event of an otherwise easily resolved power issue.
|-
! colspan="3"|Title text
|-
| colspan="3"|The title text is about {{w|causality}} (not to be confused with {{w|casualty}}), and how to use this (unseen, located elsewhere) breaker along with the last shown switch that (de)powers the illustrated box.

Causality, in its simplest form, is the process of cause and effect, meaning that everything that happens only happens because something caused it to happen - in other words, every event is an effect caused by another event. For example, a bag of chips can't just fall onto the floor for ''literally'' no reason - it has to be caused by some other event, such as someone smacking it or a gust of wind blowing it down.

Turning off the circuit breaker using the CIRCUIT BREAKERS switch may lead to a loop, if the disabled breaker can no longer disable itself, leading to it turning back on, etc. Alternatively, turning off the CIRCUIT BREAKER switch might be a one-way street.

Turning the CAUSALITY switch from OFF back to ON might be unlikely to do anything if the circuit breakers upstream of it have been fully deactivated. The separation of cause and effect would ostensibly take precedence over the current switch setting. Turning off CAUSALITY first would prevent either the loop or the permanent disabling of circuit breakers, but would also have many other side effects, including letting switches potentially serve power even if there is no power being served ''to them'', or even spontaneously switching (on or off) without any intervention or reason.

The 'warning', from an electrician, could even be to locate the nominally ''off'' CAUSALITY switch in order to turn it ''on'', or else all other intended effects will possibly not end up being actually actioned. Either way, whether or not turning on/off causality would change the state of causality (at one stage or other being rendered ineffectual) is an exercise left for the reader.
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[An open breaker box is shown. There are 26 labelled breakers, all of which are on, paired back to back in thirteen rows as a label, switch, switch and label.]
:Kitchen lights / A whirring fan you didn't realize was on until now
:Living room lights / Dishwasher
:Porch lights / Dishes
:Bathroom lights and one surprise mystery outlet somewhere / Hallway lights
:North-facing appliances / Hallway outlets
:Bathtub drain light / Hallway floors
:Appliances whose names contain the letter "F" / Social media
:Hot water heater / State law
:Regular water heater / Federal law
:Outlets in rooms that it's normal to eat pizza in / Second law of thermodynamics
:High-pitched hum generator / Friction
:The solution to the cryptogram below: [Additional squiggled words that are too small/indistinct to read.] / Gravity
:Bugs / Circuit breakers

{{comic discussion}}

2067: Challengers

2023-08-18T18:03:28Z

Lumpman2:

{{comic
| number = 2067
| date = November 2, 2018
| title = Challengers
| image = challengers.png
| titletext = Use your mouse or fingers to pan + zoom. To edit the map, submit your ballot on November 6th.
}}
{{TOC}}
*To experience the interactivity of the game, visit the {{xkcd|2067|original comic}}.

==Explanation==
[[File:challengers_loading_screen.png|thumb|300px|Loading screen]]
Regarding the {{w|United States elections, 2018|midterm elections}} held in the United States on November 6, 2018, this comic shows probably all challengers, which are candidates running against the current officeholder, as well as those running in open seats where a change of the major party from the previous election could occur. It is the second of three consecutive comics that deal with this election.

[[Randall]] states on top that "The bigger the candidate's name is,"
*the higher the office is in command structure, and
*the better their chances of success as a challenger are
While an office can be subclassified by order from state down to county, the guesses on ''better chances to success'' can be only based on surveys before the elections.

All names provide an indirect link to the first {{w|Google Search}} result on that specific person and position. As common, {{w|Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic}} candidates are shown in blue text, {{w|Republican Party (United States)|Republican}} candidates in red, and independent candidates are in green.

The landmarks shown in gray are essentially links to Wikipedia pages containing coordinates pointing to the US in their body (both visible on the site and hidden in the wiki source) that point to places in the US. If they contain more than one coordinate then the first one is used, for example the {{w|List of the major 3000-meter summits of the United States}} page is shown in Alaska, and the {{w|xkcd}} page is linked near Boston, Massachusetts. This list seems to be auto generated from a Wikipedia dump made possibly before 2017. There doesn't seem to be any other criteria as the list also contains orphaned wikipedia pages that only contain hidden coordinates in their sources pointing to the US, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Yangjie_Li for example this one]. Wikipedia pages containing these coordinates can be {{w|Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Coord|easily enumerated on the site}} in blocks of 500 at a time.

Since the map is large there's also a [https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/challengers.png loading screen] present that can be seen while the map is loading. There are a total of nine comics embedded into the map at various locations. They are showed when zooming into the map at the appropriate section.

The title text shows the hint that the reader can zoom in and move over all fifty states to reveal details which can't be seen in the overall view. Furthermore [[Randall]] calls on Americans to vote to change that picture.

===Attack Ads===
[[File:challengers_subcomic_abernathy_texas.png|thumb|200px|Attack Ads]]

Location: '''Lubbock, Texas'''
: [Black Hat and Cueball are talking.]
: Black Hat: Starting on November 7th, we're going to blanket the airwaves with attack ads.
: Cueball: Isn't the election on November 6th?
: Black Hat: Yeah, the advertising rates go way down after that.
{{w|Attack ads}} are campaign advertising that usually attack the opponents' campaign instead of promoting one's own. The comic also refers to the fact that media outlets usually spike their advertising prices during the campaign, and it becomes cheaper afterwards. However, there's usually no point in advertising afterwards for a campaign as the polling has already taken place. This may also be a callback to [[1130: Poll Watching]].

Lubbock was the place where some [https://www.texastribune.org/2018/08/03/cruz-orourke-attack-ad-reelection-texas/ attack ads were shown] few months before the election. Texas is also notable as in 2008 during the Democratic Party primary Hillary Clinton [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/us/politics/01campaign.html started running attack ads] aimed at Barack Obama, who later became President, causing controversy.
 

===Ballot Measures===
[[File:challengers_subcomic_weed_california.png|thumb|350px|Ballot Measures]]

Location: '''Weed, California'''
: [Cueball is holding a piece of paper and talking to Megan.]
: Cueball: Question #1 voids all 2018 ballot measures except itself.
: Cueball: Question #2 retroactively lowers the threshold for passing ballot measures to 5%.
: Cueball: Question #3 requires a re-vote on all failed ballot measures a day later.
: Cueball: Question #4 requires a re-vote on all passed ballot measures a day later.
: Cueball: Question #5 bans those annoying phone scammers, but also says that if an odd number of ballot measures pass, Christmas is canceled.
: Cueball: Question #6 makes a "yes" count as a "no" on odd-numbered ballot measures.
: Cueball: Question #7 does nothing but counts as a ballot measure passing.
: Cueball: Question #8 says that-
: Megan: I'm leaving these all blank and voting against whoever approves ballot measures.

Ballot measures are proposed laws that are approved and rejected by voters. In California, apart from the elections to Congressional and state offices, there will also be [https://ballotpedia.org/California_2018_ballot_propositions 12 extra propositions] for the voters in this election. Sometimes propositions also include changing how voting should be done in subsequent elections. [https://www.vox.com/2016/6/23/11979522/brexit-ballot There are people] who believe proposals on US ballots are asked in a very convoluted way and could be made simpler.

In this comic a lot of the proposals sound complex and self-referential as well, therefore Megan just says that she doesn't wish to vote to any of them and would actually like to ban people creating ballot papers like this. Not voting might also refer to the scenario where people believe none of the choices during an election are good, and instead vote to no-one or deface their ballot papers in protest.

The name of the town chosen, Weed, California, may be a pun on how marijuana is legal in California.
 

===Carlymandering===
[[File:challengers_subcomic_seattle_washington.png|thumb|270px|Carlymandering]]

Location: '''Bellingham, Washington'''
: [Cueball holds a presentation to a group of people including White Hat and Hairbun sitting at an office desk. The presentation shows a map of a district.]
: Cueball: Under my new Carlymandering plan, we'll create five red districts, five blue districts, and one district which contains only Carly Rae Jepsen.
: Hairbun: That seems fair.

This refers to {{w|gerrymandering}}, a tactic used to re-shape voting district boundaries to make sure one candidate prevails over the other. "Carlymandering" is a [[739: Malamanteau|malamanteau]] which combines gerrymandering with {{w|Carly Rae Jepsen}}, a Canadian singer, whose single "{{w|Party for One}}" was released the day before the comic's publication. Although the song is about partying (e.g., going out) alone, the joke is that it could also mean a one-person political party, and she would have a full gerrymandered district to herself.

Jepsen lives in Vancouver, which is just on the other side of the US border in Canada. The comic is placed in Whatcom County, which is notable for {{w|Point Roberts}}, a peninsula which, although part of Washington state, is actually an exclave of the US, as it's surrounded by sea on three sides, and has its only land border with Vancouver to the north. The comic might refer to the fact that Jepsen could solely live in this exclave. However, since she is not a US citizen, she can neither vote nor be elected in US elections.
 

===House===
[[File:challengers_subcomic_washington_dc.png|thumb|100px|House]]

Location: '''Washington, DC'''
: [Cueball is standing in the middle of Washington, DC]
: Cueball: I can see my House from here!

Comic is probably referencing the {{w|White House}}, the residence of the President, located in Washington, DC. This could also refer to the {{w|United States Capitol|Capitol Building}}, the home of the {{w|United States House of Representatives|House of Representatives}}, also located in Washington, DC.
 

===Polls===
[[File:challengers_subcomic_primm_nevada.png|thumb|230px|Polls]]

Location: '''Primm, Nevada'''
: [A group of five people are standing]
: Blondie: Remember: The only poll that counts is the one on Election Day. And the ones that help campaigns allocate resources. And the ones that drive media coverage and the ones that inform us all about what our fellow members of the public believe. And the ones that...

The word "poll" has two distinct meanings in regard to elections -- the place where you go to cast your official vote is called a poll, as are the unofficial surveys done to try to gauge how people are likely to vote.

During campaign there is usually polling done by survey companies to determine each candidate's chances of winning. This comic refers to the fact that often the candidate that is behind in the unofficial polls tells their electorate that these polls don't matter, as they are just surveys and not the actual final result. This is usually to encourage their voter base that it's still worth voting for them. The joke here is that Blondie doesn't finish here but tells the electorate that other polls are actually also important.

Nevada is one of the states where there is [https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign-polls/414083-poll-dems-hold-slim-leads-in-arizona-and-nevada-senate-races only a slim difference] between the candidates based on polls hence the need for each candidate to rally their supporters and make sure everyone is voting.
 

===Punish===
[[File:challengers_subcomic_chadron_nebraska.png|thumb|150px|Punish]]

Location: '''Chadron, Nebraska'''
: [Megan is standing at a podium with her arm raised]
: Megan: If elected, I vow to find and punish the voters responsible.

Often candidates make promises of things they will do when they are elected. Vowing to find and punishing people responsible for a certain action, oftentimes criminals, is also common. However, [https://imgur.com/r/misc/d4jbdEV certain performance artists aside,] these two things are generally not conflated, as they are here, to ludicrous effect.

Putting this comic into Nebraska might refer to the fact that in [https://ballotpedia.org/Nebraska_Death_Penalty_Repeal,_Referendum_426_(2016) 2016 Nebraska voted to repeal the death penalty ban], allowing the reinstatement of the death penalty, also called capital punishment, in the state.
 

===Scholten===
[[File:challengers_subcomic_storm_lake_iowa.png|thumb|400px|Scholten]]

Location: '''Storm Lake, Iowa'''
: Cueball: The midterms are so stressful.
: Megan: I just hope J.D. Scholten wins.
: Cueball: Why?
: Megan: Google Steve King.
: [Cueball looking at his phone]
: Cueball: Yikes.

{{w|United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections_in_Iowa,_2018#District_4|J.D. Scholten}} is a Democratic candidate for Iowa's 4th Congressional District. {{w|Steve King}} is a Republican representative who has stirred controversy due his endorsement of candidates, in other countries, who were members of parties with white supremacist ties, and he has explicitly and frequently stated concern with the American society being destroyed by [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/12/us/steve-king-white-nationalism-racism.html "other people's babies"].
 King would go on to win re-election by a narrow margin.

===Spanberger===
[[File:challengers_subcomic_richmond_virginia.png|thumb|150px|Spanberger]]

Location: '''Richmond, Virginia'''
: [Cueball is holding a sign that says: Abigail Spanberger for Congress]

Abigail Spanberger was a candidate running for Congress in Virginia's 7th district, which includes Richmond. Based on polls she had a chance to beat her opponent, and she then became the first Democrat in her district after 50 years of Republican control, beating out Republican incumbent David Brat by 2 percentage points. Cueball probably was trying to encourage people to vote for her on election day.
 

===St Louis===
[[File:challengers_subcomic_saint_louis_missouri.png|thumb|300px|St Louis]]

Location: '''Saint Louis, Missouri'''
: [Two people next to the Gateway Arch are talking]
: Cueball: Ah, Saint Louis. Home of America's largest... Whatever that thing is.

Saint Louis, Missouri is the location of the {{w|Gateway Arch}}, the largest arch in the United States. (It's also one of the most recognizable arches in Saint Louis, according to [[1368: One Of The]].) Since in this comic they are next to the side of the arch, it is possible its sheer size stops them from determining what it is, although they should probably know. An alternate interpretation is that they are baffled by the existence of a giant, seemingly-useless steel arch, and do not know what to refer to it as.

The area surrounding the Arch was known as Jefferson National Expansion Memorial until February 2018, when it was renamed to Gateway Arch National Park.
 

==Transcript==
:[A loading screen appears shortly before the large picture has rendered. We can see an American flag in an oval badge with the text:]
:I voted
:[And beneath a text saying:]
:Loading...

:2018 Midterm
:'''Challengers'''
:The bigger the candidate's name, the higher the office and the better their chances of success.

:[In a frame a zoomable map shows all US-States (Alaska and Hawaii are shown in the left lower corner.) The candidates are shown colored mainly in red and blue at different sizes. Each state has many landmarks shown in gray. There are also many comics embedded into the picture.]

:By Randall Munroe, Kelsey Harris, and Max Goodman

:Landmarks from Wikipedia. Success odds estimated from district voting history, special election
:results, and seat ratings. Thank you to Dailykos Elections for their spreadsheets, shapefiles, election
:ratings, and advice, and to @davidshor, @charlotteeffect, and @thedlcc for additional candidate data.

==Trivia==
*When this comic was released the [[Design_of_xkcd.com#Header_text|Header text]] changed to help people on how to vote in the upcoming election. See this [[2068:_Election_Night#Election_related_header_texts|trivia]] from the [[2068: Election Night]] comic, released after this one.
*The interactive picture did not work in many browsers when using the link ''[https://www.xkcd.com www.xkcd.com]'', only the short ''[https://xkcd.com xkcd.com]'' worked properly because the page used an absolute link to a file ''[https://xkcd.com/2067/asset/map-data.json map-data.json]'' at the domain ''<nowiki>xkcd.com</nowiki>'' which is not allowed from ''<nowiki>www.xkcd.com</nowiki>'' according to {{w|Cross-origin resource sharing}}. This was later fixed by using a relative link only working inside the called domain.
* The internal comics have a kind of "comic" inside the [https://xkcd.com/2067/asset/map-data.json map-data.json] file that contains all of the details shown on the map. All other locations, including politicians and landmarks inside the map-data.json have a kind of "label"
* There are a total of
** 9 subcomics
** 17,643 labels, including:
*** 13,339 landmarks (gray)
*** 2,845 Democratic candidates (blue)
*** 1,456 Republican candidates (red)
*** 3 independent candidates (green)
* The three independent candidates are:
** Alaska Congress candidate Alyse Galvin
** Texas State House District 101 candidate James Allen
** Alabama State Senate District 10 candidate Craig Ford
* The largest names on the map (based on font size) are:
** Michelle Lujan Grisham, Governor candidate for New Mexico (7.187)
** Beto O'Rourke, Texan US Senate candidate (6.773)
** Matt Rosendale, Montanan US Senate candidate (6.773)
** Gretchen Whitmer, Governor candidate for Michigan (6.48)
* There's a landmark label called "xkcd" near Boston, Massachusetts
* Randall seems to have collected the Wikipedia links from an older copy of Wikipedia, as some links are to old article titles. For example, in Cupertino, California, "Apple Campus 2" is shown instead of "Apple Park", even though that article was moved to its current title in February 2017.
*An overview highlighting some parts:
:<imagemap>
Image:Challengers_Map.png|frame|left|Map of interesting features on the comic (Red X: comic strip, Green X: independent candidate, Blue X: xkcd landmark)
rect 179 176 138 129 [[#Carlymandering|Carlymandering]]
rect 95 279 133 325 [[#Ballot Measures|Ballot Measures]]
rect 171 421 208 467 [[#Polls|Polls]]
rect 392 307 430 352 [[#Punish|Punish]]
rect 403 488 441 533 [[#Attack_Ads|Attack Ads]]
rect 510 307 547 351 [[#Scholten|Scholten]]
rect 593 390 628 434 [[#St_Louis|St Louis]]
rect 803 355 839 394 [[#House|House]]
rect 837 436 799 395 [[#Spanberger|Spanberger]]
rect 877 262 915 309 [[#Trivia|Link to xkcd's wikipage]]
rect 141 597 177 644 [[#Trivia|Independent candidate]]
rect 472 527 511 576 [[#Trivia|Independent candidate]]
rect 672 478 710 525 [[#Trivia|Independent candidate]]
desc top-right
</imagemap>
 

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Large drawings]]
[[Category:Interactive comics]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Blondie]]
[[Category:Elections]]
[[Category:US maps]]
[[Category:Dynamic comics]]

2707: Astronomy Numbers

2023-01-15T18:03:36Z

Lumpman2:

{{comic
| number = 2707
| date = December 5, 2022
| title = Astronomy Numbers
| image = astronomy_numbers_2x.png
| imagesize = 593x315px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = I adopted a cat that weighs 12 solar masses. Laser pointers love chasing it.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by A WARPED SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Space [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv1spjsvu-A is big] and the things that are in space can also end up being very big themselves. As a result, most quantities in astronomy have huge scales. For example, Earth has a mass 1023 times more than the average human, and the Sun is 105 times more than that, which itself is 1012 times less massive than the Milky Way. The same applies to speeds, distances, and time, which can often be measured in terms of light speed, light-years, and millions or billions of years. Because of this, it's a truly unusual occurrence for anything in space to end up in the fairly narrow range of scales of mass, size, speed, or time that humans can easily grasp.

[[Ponytail]], apparently a scientist researching something related to Earth's orbit, finds that on the date in question (January 1, although the year is not specified), Earth will be approaching the sun at a velocity of 65 miles per hour—an extremely common and normal-sounding velocity to American ears, often used as a speed limit on highways in the US. Ponytail is clearly a little thrown off by this, and remarks that she finds it "suspicious" when reasonably human-scaled numbers come up.

She then extends this discomfort to things that should be measured in regular numbers, such as the weight of cats. The vet, [[Megan]], is seemingly used to this problem (perhaps she gets a lot of astronomers, or Ponytail has a hypochondriac cat), so she restates the 12-lb weight of Ponytail's cat in solar masses. Since using this unit yields an ''incredibly'' small number, 3×10-30 (a three preceded by a decimal point and 29 zeroes), it evidently sounds more plausible to the astronomer. This weight is in fact about 13 lb 2 oz (about 5.5 kilograms), slightly heavier than the initial figure given for the cat, but within [[2585: Rounding|rounding error]] for the single digit of precision that Megan uses. According to [[2205:_Types_of_Approximation | 2205: Types of Approximation]] that rounding error is unusually small for an astronomer, though. Also, the usage of weight gives the word "scales" in "scales should all be incomprehensible" a double meaning because scales are used to weigh things, including cats. A scale that returns weights in solar masses would indeed be incomprehensible to most people. However, this could be unintentional on Randall's part.

The Earth's orbital velocity around the Sun is far above any "normal" scales (around 30 kilometers per second or 108,000 kilometers per hour). However, Earth has a pretty circular orbit around the Sun, so most of this speed ends up being tangential (sideways) rather than radial (towards or away from) the Sun, which is the value relevant for Ponytail's calculations. On January 1, Earth's radial velocity is close to its smallest value because we reach our closest point to the Sun in the first few days of January each year (in 2023, {{w|Perihelion|perihelion}} happens on January 4) so by January 1, it's nearly come to a standstill before it starts traveling away from the Sun again. On the other hand, by April 3, 2023, Earth will be receding from the Sun by almost 500 meters per second or 1800 kilometers per hour, a less normal speed for the average person to encounter in everyday life.{{citation needed}} 65 miles per hour is approximately equal to 105 kilometers per hour, although the even more typical scientific value (in {{w|International System of Units|SI}} derived units) would be 29 meters per second.

The title text suggests that laser pointers "love chasing" a new cat with a weight of 12 solar masses (an inversion of the typical cat behavior of [[729: Laser Pointer|chasing laser pointer dots]]). A 12 solar mass cat would have the dominant gravitation well in our solar system, which would make everything fall towards the cat – including laser pointers. Furthermore, all gravitational fields bend light towards their center; a 12 solar mass object could bend light quite a lot. The path of the light from a laser pointer aimed near such a cat would bend towards it or "chase" it. In fact, anything with 12 solar masses would have a Schwarzschild radius of around 36 kilometers, so any cat-sized thing with that mass would be a black hole, drawing all light within a 72-kilometer sphere around it into its singularity.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail is standing in front of a whiteboard writing on it with a pen, while Cueball looks over her shoulder from behind her. On the board is an almost circular ellipse with a cross that centers on a dot towards the left side of it. On the right side there is a small circle on the ellipse's line. There are several lines of wiggles representing unreadable text. To the left of the ellipse there are two lines near the top of and four near at the bottom of the ellipse. Ponytail is writing a fifth line below these almost under the ellipse. At the bottom to the left there is a rectangular frame with a line of text beneath it and at the bottom left corner there is a line forming a half closes rectangle around two dots.]
:Ponytail: …And we need to correct for our elliptical orbit. On January 1st, Earth will be approaching the sun at a rate of ...let's see...
:Ponytail: 65 miles per hour.
:Ponytail: Weird. Okay.
:Cueball: Weird?

:[Ponytail has turned towards Cueball, the pen is no longer in her hand and the white board is no longer shown.]
:Ponytail: I get suspicious whenever I see a normal number in astronomy. We're not supposed to have those. Feels wrong.
:Ponytail: Scales should all be incomprehensible.

:[Megan in a lab-coat raised her hand palm up towards an animal carrier cage standing on her desk. The cage has a handle and five air holes are at the top. Behind two of them something black inside the cage can be seen. Ponytail is standing on the other side of the desk looking at Megan. Above the top of the panels frame there is a panel with a label:]
:Earlier, at the vet:
:Megan: Your cat weighs 12 lbs.
:Ponytail: Ridiculous, nothing weighs "12". You must mean 10-20? Or 1040?
:Megan: Fine. Your cat weighs 3x10-30 solar masses.
:Ponytail: Okay. Better.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Cats]]

2379: Probability Comparisons

2022-11-04T23:19:12Z

Lumpman2: not the complement

{{comic
| number = 2379
| date = October 30, 2020
| title = Probability Comparisons
| image = probability comparisons new.png
| titletext = Call me, MAYBE.
}}

==Explanation==
This is a list of probabilities for different events. There are numerous recurring themes, of which the most common are free throws (13 entries), birthdays (12), dice (12, split about evenly between 6-sided (d6) and 20-sided (d20) types), {{w|M&M's|M&M}} candies (11), playing cards (9), {{w|NBA}} basketball mid-game victory predictions (9), {{w|Scrabble}} tiles (7), coins (7), white Christmases (7), and the NBA players {{w|Stephen Curry}} and {{w|LeBron James}} (7 each).

Themes are variously repeated and combined, for humorous effect. For instance, there are entries for both the probability that St. Louis will have a white Christmas (21%) and that it will not (79%). Also given is the 40% probability that a random Scrabble tile will contain a letter from the name "Steph Curry".

There are 80 items in the list, the last two of which devolve into absurdity - perhaps from the stress of preparing the other 78 entries.

The list may be an attempt to better understand probabilistic election forecasts for the {{w|2020 United States presidential election}}, which was four days away at the time this comic was published and had also been alluded to in [[2370: Prediction]] and [[2371: Election Screen Time]]. Statistician and {{w|psephologist}} {{w|Nate Silver}} is referenced in one of the list items. On the date this cartoon was published, Nate Silver's website FiveThirtyEight.com was [https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/ publishing forecast probabilities] of Donald Trump and Joe Biden winning the US Presidential election. On 31 October 2020, the forecast described the chances of Donald Trump winning as "roughly the same as the chance that it’s raining in downtown Los Angeles. It does rain there. (Downtown L.A. has about 36 rainy days per year, or about a 1-in-10 shot of a rainy day.)" A day previously, when the chances were 12%, the website had also described Trump's chances of winning as "slightly less than a six sided die rolling a 1".

The probabilities are calculated from [https://xkcd.com/2379/sources/ these sources], as mentioned in the bottom left corner.

The title text refers to the song "{{w|Call Me Maybe}}" by {{w|Carly Rae Jepsen}} (cited twice in the list). "MAYBE" is emphasized, perhaps because the probability of getting her phone number correct, as in the last item in the list, is very low. The capitalization could also be a reference to Scrabble tiles, as was previously mentioned in association with Carly Rae Jepsen.

==Table==
{| class="wikitable sortable"
! Odds
! Text
! Explanation
|-
| 0.01%
| You guess the last four digits of someone's {{w|Social Security Number}} on the first try
| There are nine digits in a {{w|Social Security Number}}, but the last four are commonly used as an identity verification factor. (1/10)4 = 0.0001, or 0.01%
|-
| 0.1%
| Three randomly chosen people are all left-handed
| The chances of having left-{{w|handedness}} is about [https://www.healthline.com/health/left-handers-and-health-risk 10%], and 10%3 = 0.1%.
|-
| rowspan="2" | 0.2%
| You draw 2 random {{w|Scrabble}} tiles and get M and M
| This appears to be an error. Under standard English {{w|Scrabble letter distribution}} there are 100 tiles of which 2 are M. This would give a probability of randomly drawing M and M as 2/100 × 1/99 ≈ 0.02%. However, other language editions of Scrabble have different letter distributions, some of which could allow this to be true.
|-
| You draw 3 random {{w|M&Ms}} and they're all red
| Depending on the source of one's M&Ms in the U.S., the proportion of reds is either 0.131 or 0.125 . 0.131^3 ≈ 0.225%; 0.125^3 ≈ 0.177% .
|-
| 0.3%
| You guess someone's birthday in one try.
| 1/365 ≈ 0.27%. Taking into account that a person might have been born February 29, the probability with a random guess is slightly lower. If the guesser knows on which days there are slightly more births (for example, early October, believed to be because of conceptions occurring on the evening of December 31) and which days there are slightly fewer (for examples, holidays on which a planned, pre-scheduled C-section is unlikely to be held), then the probability is slightly higher.
|-
| rowspan="2" | 0.5%
| An {{w|NBA}} team down by 30 at halftime wins
| This calculation, along with all related ones, use the source [http://stats.inpredictable.com/nba/wpCalc.php NBA Win Probability Calculator]. Entering Q2, 0:00, and -30 into the calculator yields 0.6% .
|-
| You get 4 M&Ms and they're all brown or yellow
| Depending on the source of one's M&Ms in the U.S., the proportion of them that is brown or yellow is either 0.25 or 0.259 . 0.254≈ 0.39%; 0.2594 ≈ 0.45% . Both are closer to 0.4% .
|-
| rowspan="2" | 1%
| {{w|Steph Curry}} gets two free throws and misses both
| Curry is a 91% career free throw shooter, so the percentage of missing 1 free throw is about 9%. The chance of missing 2 free throws is about 0.8% ≈ 1%.
|-
| {{w|LeBron James}} guesses your birthday, if each guess costs one free throw and he loses if he misses
| LeBron James' free-throw odds are ~73% . The odds of him winning on the first round are 1/365, for the second (1/364)(0.73), for the third (1/363)(0.73)2... Summing all of these from 1 to 365 gives us his total odds of winning at any point in the game are ≈ 1.022% .
|-
| rowspan="2" | 1.5%
| You get two M&Ms and they're both red
| Depending on the source of one's M&Ms in the U.S., the proportion of reds is either 0.131 or 0.125 . 0.131^2 ≈ 1.7%; 0.125^2 ≈ 1.6% .
|-
| You share a birthday with a {{w|Backstreet Boys|Backstreet Boy}}
|Each of the five Backstreet Boys has a different birthday, so the odds that you share a birthday with one is 5/365.25 ≈ 1.3% .
|-
| 2%
| You guess someone's card on the first try
| There are 52 cards in a normal deck of cards (excluding jokers), so the probability is 1/52, which is approximately 0.019 (1.9%).
|-
| rowspan="2"| 3%
| You guess 5 coin tosses and get them all right
| The chance of correctly predicting a coin toss is 0.5. The chance of predicting 5 in a row is 0.55, or 3.125%.
|-
| Steph Curry wins that birthday free throw game
| Swap out 0.73 for 0.91 in the above calculations to find Steph Curry's odds of winning. This sum yields ~3.13% .
|-
| rowspan="3"| 4%
| You sweep a 3-game {{w|rock paper scissors}} series
| Picking randomly, you have a 1 in 3 chance of beating an opponent on the first try. (1/3)3 = 1/27 ≈ 4% .
|-
| {{w|Portland, Oregon}} has a {{w|White Christmas (weather)|white Christmas}}
| According to Randall's source (from the ''Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society''), the probability of snow cover in Portland is 4%.
|-
| You share a birthday with two {{w|US Senator}}s
| At the time this comic was published, 15 days were birthdays for more than one Senator, and 15/365.25 ≈ 4%.<ref>Rand Paul and John Thune - January 7 
Chris Van Hollen and Roy Blunt - January 10 
Tina Smith and James Lankford - March 4 
Tammy Duckworth and Mitt Romney - March 12 
Angus King and Patrick Leahy - March 31 
Jim Risch and Ron Wyden - May 3 
Dianne Feinstein and Elizabeth Warren - June 22 
Todd Young and Joe Manchin - August 24 
Kamala Harris, Brian Schatz, and Sheldon Whitehouse - October 20 
Jeff Merkley and Mike Rounds - October 24 
Jim Inhofe and Pat Toomey - November 17 
Dick Durbin and John Kennedy - November 21 
Rick Scott and Gary Peters - December 1 
John Boozman and David Perdue - December 10 

Based on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_United_States_senators List of current US Senators on Wikipedia] (and processed through [https://bit.ly/2HZeqQs this Google sheet)].
</ref>
|-
| rowspan="2"| 5%
| An NBA team down 20 at halftime wins
| Entering Q2, 0:00, and -20 into the NBA Win Probability Calculator yields 5.2% or 5.3% .
|-
| You roll a natural 20
| A natural 20 indicates a critical hit in the {{w|Dungeons & Dragons}} role playing game. "Natural" means that it is the number showing when rolling a d20 (a 20-sided die), as opposed to an overall total of 20 when counting the die roll plus modifiers. There are twenty sides to a d20 die. 1/20 = 0.05 = 5%
|-
| 6%
| You correctly guess someone's card given 3 tries
| Picking a random card within 3 times gives 1 - (51/52)(50/51)(49/50) ≈ 6% .
|-
| 7%
| LeBron James gets two free throws and misses both
| James' career free throw percentage is 73%, so the probability of a miss is 27%. The probability of 2 misses is (27%)2, which is about 7%.
|-
| 8%
| You correctly guess someone's card given 4 tries
| Assuming you guess four different cards, 4/52 = 0.0769 ≈ 8% .
|-
| 9%
| Steph Curry misses a free throw
| Curry's career free throw percentage is 91%, so the probability of a miss is 9%.
|-
| rowspan="2"|10%
| You draw 5 cards and get the Ace of Spades
| There are 52 cards in a normal deck of cards (excluding jokers), and the Ace of Spades is one of them.{{Citation needed}} The chances of getting the card is 1 - 51/52 * 50/51 * 49/50 * 48/49 * 47/48 which is approximately 0.096, which rounds to the given 0.1 or 10%.  
|-
| There's a {{w|Moment magnitude scale|magnitude}} 8+ earthquake in the next month
| Note that, unlike other earthquake examples, this does not specify where the earthquake occurs.
|-
| 11%
| You sweep a 2-game rock paper scissors series
| You have a 1/3 chance of winning the first comparison, and a 1/3 chance of winning the second. (1/3) * (1/3) = 1/9 ~ 0.11 = 11% .
|-
| rowspan="3"|12%
| A randomly-chosen American lives in {{w|California}}
| California is the most populous state in the US. Out of the approximately 328.2 million Americans (as of 2019), 39.51 million live in California. This means that a randomly chosen American has about a 39.51/328.2 ≈ 10.33% chance of living in California. Due to population change and rounding based on different sources, this could be pushed to 12%.
|-
| You correctly guess someone's card given 6 tries
| Assuming you don't repeat previous wrong guesses, the probability is 6/52 ≈ 11.54%.
|-
| You share a birthday with a {{w|US President}}
| Presidents {{w|James Polk}} and {{w|Warren Harding}} share a birthday, and are the only presidents so far (in 2020) to do so. Additionally, {{w|Grover Cleveland}} served two non-consecutive terms and is counted twice (as the 22nd and 24th presidents). He therefore shares a birthday with himself. With 43 distinct birthdays, the odds of sharing a birthday are 43/365 ≈ 12%. (This does not consider February 29 or that more births occur on some days than others.)
|-
| rowspan="3"|13%
| A {{w|Dice#Polyhedral_dice|d6}} beats a {{w|Dice#Polyhedral_dice|d20}}
| The odds of a d6 beating a d20 are (0 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5)/(6*20) = 0.125 ≈ 13% .
|-
| An NBA team down 10 going into the 4th quarter wins
| Entering Q3, 0:00, and -10 into the NBA Win Probability Calculator yields 12.6% or 12.8% .
|-
| You pull one M&M from a bag and it's red
| Depending on the source of one's M&Ms in the U.S., the proportion of reds is either 0.131 or 0.125 .
|-
| 14%
| A randomly drawn scrabble tile beats a D6 die roll
| {{w|Scrabble}} is a game in which you place lettered tiles to form words. Most of the scores per letter are 1, making it rare to beat a d6. The odds are (70/100)(0) + (7/100)(1/6) + (8/100)(2/6) + (10/100)(3/6) + (1/100)(4/6) + (4/100)(6/6) ≈ 14%.
|-
| 15%
| You roll a D20 and get at least 18
| The set of "at least 18" on a d20 is 18, 19, and 20. The odds of rolling one of these is 3/20 = 15% .
|-
| 16%
| Steph Curry gets two free throws but makes only one
| Steph Curry's free throw percentage is 91%, so (0.91)(0.09) = 8.19% . However, the order of these is irrelevant, so the total odds are 16.38% .
|-
| 17%
| You roll a D6 die and get a 6
| The odds are 1/6 ≈ 17% .
|-
| 18%
| A D6 beats or ties a D20
| The odds are (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6)/(120) = 17.5% .
|-
| 19%
| At least one person in a random pair is left-handed
| The chances of being left handed is about 10%, so the probability of both people in the pair not being left-handed is 0.92=0.81, and 1-0.81=0.19.
|-
| 20%
| You get a dozen M&Ms and none of them are brown
| Depending on the source of one's M&Ms in the U.S., the proportion of browns is either 0.124 or 0.125 . (1 - 0.125)^12 ≈ 20.1%; (1 - 0.124)^12 ≈ 20.4% .
|-
| 21%
| {{w|St. Louis}} has a white Christmas
| According to Randall's source, the probability of snow cover in St. Louis is 21%.
|-
| 22%
| An NBA team wins when they're down 10 at halftime
| Entering Q2, 0:00, and -10 into the NBA Win Probability Calculator yields 22.3% or 22.5% .
|-
| rowspan="2"| 23%
| You get an M&M and it's blue
| Depending on the source of one's M&Ms in the U.S., the proportion of blues is either 0.207 or 0.25 .
|-
| You share a birthday with a US senator
| There are 100 Senators, but 31 Senators share 15 birthdays and 69 Senators have unique birthdays, so there are a total of 84 days of the year that are the birthday of a Senator.
|-
| 24%
| You correctly guess that someone was born in the winter
| By date, the cited U.S. census data gives that 24,545,230 of the 101,909,161 people were born in the ''meteorological'' winter (December through February), or 24.09%.
|-
| rowspan="2"| 25%
| You correctly guess that someone was born in the fall
| By date, the cited U.S. census data gives that 25,701,366 of the 101,909,161 people were born in the ''meteorological'' fall (September through November), or 25.22%.
|-
| You roll two plain M&Ms and get M and M.
| An M&M can land on one of two sides, one with an M and one without. The odds of "rolling" two Ms is 1/4 = 25%. The term "rolling" is used jokingly in reference to the d6s and d20s above, suggesting that an M&M is a standard d2; this becomes especially true once you consider that a more accurate reference would have been to a coin, not a die.
|-
| 26%
| You correctly guess someone was born in the summer
| By date, the cited U.S. census data gives that 26,475,119 of the 101,909,161 people were born in the ''meteorological'' summer (June through August), or 25.98%.
|-
| 27%
| LeBron James misses a free throw
| James' career free throw percentage is 73%, so the probability of missing is 27%.
|-
| 32%
| {{w|Pittsburgh}} has a white Christmas
| According to Randall's source, the probability of snow cover in Pittsburgh is 32%.
|-
| rowspan="3"| 33%
| A randomly chosen Star Wars movie (Episodes I-IX) has "of the" in the title
| Episodes II (Attack of the Clones), III (Revenge of the Sith), and VI (Return of the Jedi) are the movies. This gives the odds of 3/9 ≈ 33% .
|-
| You win the Monty Hall sports car by picking a door and refusing to switch
| The {{w|Monty Hall problem}} is a counterintuitive logic problem, in which you pick one of three doors at random. One of the doors has a car behind it, so the odds that you picked the door are 1/3 ≈ 33%. Thus, by not switching doors, your odds remain the same. The Monty Hall problem has previously appeared in [[1282: Monty Hall]] and [[1492: Dress Color]].
|-
| You win rock paper scissors by picking randomly
| The odds of beating an opponent on the first try by picking randomly is 1/3 ≈ 33% .
|-
| 34%
| You draw five cards and get an ace
| The odds are 1 - (48/52)(47/51)(46/50)(45/49)(44/48) ≈ 34% .
|-
| 35%
| A random Scrabble tile is one of the letters in "random"
| The odds of drawing a letter in "random" are (6 + 9 + 6 + 4 + 8 + 2)/100 = 35% .
|-
| 39%
| LeBron James gets two free throws but misses one
| LeBron James' free throw percentage is 73% , so the odds are (0.73)(0.27) = 19.71% . However, the order is irrelevant, so the odds are actually twice, or 39.42% .
|-
| 40%
| A random Scrabble tile is a letter in "Steph Curry"
| The odds of drawing a letter in "Steph Curry" are (4 + 6 + 12 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 4 + 6 + 2)/100 = 40% .
|-
| 46%
| There's a magnitude 7 quake in LA within 30 years
|
|-
| rowspan="2"|48%
| {{w|Milwaukee}} has a white Christmas
| According to Randall's source, the probability of snow cover in Milwaukee is 48%.
|-
| A random Scrabble tile is a letter in Carly Rae Jepsen
| The odds of a Scrabble tile being in her name are (2 + 9 + 6 + 4 + 2 + 12 + 1 + 2 + 4 + 6)/100 = 48% .
|-
| 50%
| You get heads in a coin toss
| There are two options in a coin toss, heads or tails, so the odds of getting heads is 50% (1/2). Uncharacteristically for Randall, this ignores the minuscule possibility that the coin might land on its edge.
|-
| 53%
| {{w|Salt Lake City}} has a white Christmas
| According to Randall's source, the probability of snow cover in Salt Lake City is 53%.
|-
| 54%
| LeBron James gets two free throws and makes both
| James' career free throw percentage is 73%, so the probability of making 2 free throws is (73%)2 = 53.9%.
|-
| 58%
| A random Scrabble tile is a letter in "Nate Silver"
| {{w|Nate Silver}} is a recurring person on xkcd. The odds of a Scrabble tile being in his name are (6 + 9 + 6 + 12 + 4 + 9 + 4 + 2 + 6)/100 = 58% . 
|-
| 60%
| You get two M&Ms and neither is blue
| Depending on the source of one's M&Ms in the U.S., the proportion of blues is either 0.207 or 0.25 . (1 - 0.207)^2 ≈ 62.9%; (1 - 0.25)^2 ≈ 56.3%.
|-
| 65%
| {{w|Burlington, Vermont}} has a white Christmas
| According to Randall's source, the probability of snow cover in Burlington is 65%.
|-
| 66%
| A randomly chosen movie from the main Lord of the Rings trilogy has “of the” in the title twice
| The titles are:
* ''The Lord '''of the''' Rings: The Fellowship '''of the''' Ring''
* ''The Lord '''of the''' Rings: The Two Towers''
* ''The Lord '''of the''' Rings: The Return '''of the''' King''
All of them have “of the” at least once, in “The Lord of the Rings”, but only the first and third have it twice, and 2/3 ≈ 66%. This number typically rounds up to 67% , however, and it is unclear why it is not, given that the same reduced fraction is written in the 67% category below.
|-
| 67%
| You roll at least a 3 with a d6
| The set of "at least 3" on a d6 refers to 3, 4, 5, and 6. The odds are 4/6 ≈ 67%.
|-
| 71%
| A random Scrabble tile beats a random dice roll
| This is a typo, as the correct probability is at the 14% entry. A random (d6) die roll beats a random Scrabble tile 71% of the time. [[Randall]] probably meant to write '''A random d6 dice roll''' beats '''a random Scrabble tile'''.
|-
| 73%
| LeBron James makes a free throw
| This is James' career free throw percentage, 73%.
|-
| 75%
| You drop two M&Ms and one of them ends with the "M" up so it's clear they're not Skittles
| The odds of at least one 'M' showing up is 1 - (1/4) = 75% . The reference to {{w|Skittles}} is that the two candies look similar to one another, and Randall has probably bit into a Skittle thinking it was an M&M, or vice versa. This trick might prevent that from happening in the future.
|-
| 76%
| You get two M&Ms and neither is red
| Depending on the source of one's M&Ms in the U.S., the proportion of reds is either 0.131 or 0.125 . (1 - 0.131)^2 ≈ 75.5%; (1 - .125)^2 ≈ 76.6%.
|-
| 77%
| You get an an M&M and it's not blue
| Depending on the source of one's M&Ms in the U.S., the proportion of blues is either 0.207 or 0.25 . (1 - 0.207) = 79.3%; (1 - 0.25) = 75.0%.
|-
| 78%
| An NBA team wins when they're up 10 at halftime
| Entering Q2, 0:00, and 10 into the NBA Win Probability Calculator yields 77.5% or 77.7% .
|-
| 79%
| St. Louis doesn't have a white Christmas
| According to Randall's source, the probability of snow cover in St. Louis is 21%, thus the probability of ''no'' snow cover is 79%.
|-
| 81%
| Two random people are both right-handed
| The probability of 1 person being right-handed is about 90%, thus the probability of 2 right-handers is (90%)2 = 81%.
|-
| 83%
| Steph Curry gets two free throws and makes both
| Curry's career free throw percentage is 91%, so the probability of making 2 free throws is (91%)2 = 82.81%.
|-
| 85%
| You roll a d20 and get at least a 4
| The set "at least 4" on a d20 refers to 4, 5, 6... 18, 19, 20. The odds of this are 17/20 = 85% .
|-
| rowspan="2"| 87%
| An NBA team up by 10 going into the 4th quarter wins
| Entering Q3, 0:00, and 10 into the NBA Win Probability Calculator yields 87.2% or 87.4% .
|-
| Someone fails to guess your card given 7 tries
|Assuming they guess seven different cards, there are 45 unguessed cards left. 45/52 = 0.865384615 ~ 86.5%
|-
| 88%
| A randomly chosen American lives outside California
| This is the opposite of the previous California probability. As the probability of an American living in California is 12%, the opposite would be 88%.
|-
| 89%
| You roll a 3 or higher given two tries
| The probability of rolling a 3 or higher (on a 6-sided die) is 66%, so the percentage of rolling a 3 or higher given 2 tries is 1 - (1-.66)2 = 89%.
|-
| 90%
| Someone fails to guess your card given 5 tries
| Assuming they guess five different cards, there are 47 unguessed cards left. 47/52 = 0.90385 ~ 90%
|-
| rowspan="2"| 91%
| You incorrectly guess that someone was born in August
| If the odds of someone being born in August are ~9% , then the odds that a person was not born in August are ~91%. (In an average month, 8 1/3% of the population was born. August has an above average number of days, but still only about 8.5% of the year is in August.)
|-
| Steph Curry makes a free throw
| This is Curry's career free throw percentage, 91%.
|-
| 92%
| You guess someone's birth month at random and are wrong
| On average, a month lasts 8⅓% of the year. Thus, if you were to guess someone's birth month at random, you would be wrong 91 ⅔% of the time.
|-
| 93%
| Lebron James makes a free throw given two tries
| James' career free throw percentage is 73%, so the percentage of his making at least 1 free throw given 2 tries is 1 - (1-.73)2 = 93%.
|-
| 94%
| Someone fails to guess your card given 3 tries
| The odds of this happening are (51/52)(50/51)(49/50) ≈ 94% .
|-
| 95%
| An NBA team wins when they're up 20 at halftime
| Entering Q2, 0:00, and 20 into the NBA Win Probability Calculator yields 94.7% or 94.8% .
|-
| 96%
| Someone fails to guess your card given 2 tries
| The odds of this happening are (51/52)(50/51) ≈ 96% .
|-
| 97%
| You try to guess 5 coin tosses and fail
| The odds of this happening are 1 - (1/2)5 ≈ 97% .
|-
| 98%
| You incorrectly guess someone's birthday is this week
| The odds of this happening are about 51/52 ≈ 98%. (This depends on the week; there are more births in early October and fewer in holiday weeks.)
|-
| 98.5%
| An NBA team up 15 points with 8 minutes left wins
| Entering Q4, 8:00, and 15 into the NBA Win Probability Calculator yields 98.0% or 98.6% .
|-
| 99%
| Steph Curry makes a free throw given two tries
| James' career FT percentage is 91%, so the percentage of his making at least 1 FT given 2 tries is 1 - (1-.91)2 = 99%.
|-
| 99.5%
| An NBA team that's up by 30 points at halftime wins
| Entering Q2, 0:00, and 30 into the NBA Win Probability Calculator yields 99.4% .
|-
| 99.7%
| You guess someone's birthday at random and are wrong
| The odds of this are 364/365 ≈ 99.7%.
|-
| 99.8%
| There's not a {{w|Moment magnitude scale|magnitude}} 8 quake in {{w|California}} next year
|
|-
| 99.9%
| A random group of three people contains a right-hander
| About 90% of people are right-handed, so the percentage of at least 1 right-hander in a group of 3 is 1 - (1-.9)3 = 99.9%.
|-
| 99.99%
| You incorrectly guess the last four digits of someone's social security number
| There are nine digits in a Social Security Number, but the last four are commonly used as an identity verification factor. The odds of this are 1 - (1/10)4 = 99.99% .
|-
| 99.9999999999999995%
| You pick up a phone, dial a random 10-digit number, and say 'Hello Barack Obama, there's just been a {{w|Moment magnitude scale|magnitude}} 8 earthquake in {{w|California}}!" and are wrong
| This probability combines two events.

First, the probability that a random 10-digit telephone number belongs to Obama is 1/1010. This ignores potential complications from Obama owning multiple phones or failing to answer personally (perhaps using an assistant or answering machine). Additionally, it assumes numbers are dialed at random rather than making more intelligent guesses, such as using likely addresses to guess area codes.

Second, the probability of a magnitude 8 California quake is given in a previous entry as 0.2% per year. Although the time window for an earthquake to "just occur" is not given, a 15 minute window corresponds (within rounding error) to the total probability given.
|-
| 0.00000001%
| You add "Hang on, this is big — I'm going to loop in Carly Rae Jepsen", dial another random 10-digit number, and she picks up
| Carly Rae Jepsen is a Canadian singer. As Canada uses the 10-digit {{w|North American Numbering Plan}}, the odds of a random number being hers would be (1/10)10 = 0.00000001%. Like Obama, this ignores the possibility that she has multiple phones or that she doesn't answer personally.
|}

==Trivia==
In the original comic, "outside" in the 88% probability section is spelled incorrectly as "outide". In addition, the 39% section had "two free throw" instead of "throws".

The (seemingly unimportant) odds of LeBron James' versus Stephen Curry's free throws and names in Scrabble refer to [[2002: LeBron James and Stephen Curry]].

==Transcript==
[Large heading, centered.]

<big>Probability Comparisons</big>

[Left column.]

0.01% You guess the last four digits of someone's social security number on the first try

0.1% Three randomly chosen people are all left-handed

0.2% You draw 2 random Scrabble tiles and get M and M

You draw 3 random M&Ms and they're all red

0.3% You guess someone's birthday in one try.

0.5% An NBA team down by 30 at halftime wins

You get 4 M&Ms and they're all brown or yellow

1% Steph Curry gets two free throws and misses both

LeBron James guesses your birthday, if each guess costs one free throw and he loses if he misses

1.5% You get two M&Ms and they're both red

You share a birthday with a Backstreet Boy

2% You guess someone's card on the first try

3% You guess 5 coin tosses and get them all right

Steph Curry wins that birthday free throw game

4% You sweep a 3-game rock paper scissors series

Portland, Oregon has a white Christmas

You share a birthday with two US Senators

5% An NBA team down 20 at halftime wins

You roll a natural 20

6% You correctly guess someone's card given 3 tries

7% LeBron James gets two free throws and misses both

8% You correctly guess someone's card given 4 tries

9% Steph Curry misses a free throw

10% You draw 5 cards and get the Ace of Spades

There's a magnitude 8+ earthquake in the next month

11% You sweep a 2-game rock paper scissors series

12% A randomly-chosen American lives in California

You correctly guess someone's card given 6 tries

You share a birthday with a US President

13% A d6 beats a d20

An NBA team down 10 going into the 4th quarter wins

You pull one M&M from a bag and it's red

14% A randomly drawn scrabble tile beats a d6 die roll

15% You roll a d20 and get at least 18

16% Steph Curry gets two free throws but makes only one

17% You roll a d6 die and get a 6

18% A d6 beats or ties a d20

19% At least one person in a random pair is left-handed

20% You get a dozen M&Ms and none of them are brown

21% St. Louis has a white Christmas

22% An NBA team wins when they're down 10 at halftime

23% You get an M&M and it's blue

You share a birthday with a US senator

24% You correctly guess that someone was born in the winter

25% You correctly guess that someone was born in the fall

You roll two plain M&Ms and get M and M.

26% You correctly guess someone was born in the summer

27% LeBron James misses a free throw

32% Pittsburgh has a white Christmas

33% A randomly chosen Star Wars movie (Episodes I-IX) has "of the" in the title

You win the Monty Hall sports car by picking a door and refusing to switch

You win rock paper scissors by picking randomly

34% You draw five cards and get an ace

35% A random Scrabble tile is one of the letters in "random"

[Right column.]

39% LeBron James gets two free throws but misses one

40% A random Scrabble tile is a letter in "Steph Curry"

46% There's a magnitude 7 quake in LA within 30 years

48% Milwaukee has a white Christmas

A random Scrabble tile is a letter in Carly Rae Jepsen

50% You get heads in a coin toss

53% Salt Lake City has a white Christmas

54% LeBron James gets two free throws and makes both

58% A random Scrabble tile is a letter in "Nate Silver"

60% You get two M&Ms and neither is blue

65% Burlington, Vermont has a white Christmas

66% A randomly chosen movie from the main Lord of the Rings trilogy has “of the” in the title twice

67% You roll at least a 3 with a d6

71% A random Scrabble tile beats a random dice roll

73% LeBron James makes a free throw

75% You drop two M&Ms and one of them ends with the "M" up so it's clear they're not Skittles

76% You get two M&Ms and neither is red

77% You get an an M&M and it's not blue

78% An NBA team wins when they're up 10 at halftime

79% St. Louis doesn't have a white Christmas

81% Two random people are both right-handed

83% Steph Curry gets two free throws and makes both

85% You roll a d20 and get at least a 4

87% An NBA team up by 10 going into the 4th quarter wins

Someone fails to guess your card given 7 tries

88% A randomly chosen American lives outside California

89% You roll a 3 or higher given two tries

90% Someone fails to guess your card given 5 tries

91% You incorrectly guess that someone was born in August

Steph Curry makes a free throw

92% You guess someone's birth month at random and are wrong

93% Lebron James makes a free throw given two tries

94% Someone fails to guess your card given 3 tries

95% An NBA team wins when they're up 20 at halftime

96% Someone fails to guess your card given 2 tries

97% You try to guess 5 coin tosses and fail

98% You incorrectly guess someone's birthday is this week

98.5% An NBA team up 15 points with 8 minutes left wins

99% Steph Curry makes a free throw given two tries

99.5% An NBA team that's up by 30 points at halftime wins

99.7% You guess someone's birthday at random and are wrong

99.8% There's not a magnitude 8 quake in California next year

99.9% A random group of three people contains a right-hander

99.99% You incorrectly guess the last four digits of someone's social security number

99.9999999999999995% You pick up a phone, dial a random 10-digit number, and say 'Hello Barack Obama, there's just been a magnitude 8 earthquake in California!" and are wrong

0.00000001% You add "Hang on, this is big — I'm going to loop in Carly Rae Jepsen", dial another random 10-digit number, and she picks up

[In light grey colour and in the lower left corner there is text.]

Sources: https://xkcd.com/2379/sources/

==References==
<references/>

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Statistics]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Comics featuring politicians]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Nate Silver]]
[[Category:Basketball]]
[[Category:Christmas]]
[[Category:Food]]

1901: Logical

2022-05-16T23:26:57Z

Lumpman2: Undo revision 269234 by The author of xkcd (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1901
| date = October 11, 2017
| title = Logical
| image = logical.png
| titletext = It's like I've always said--people just need more common sense. But not the kind of common sense that lets them figure out that they're being condescended to by someone who thinks they're stupid, because then I'll be in trouble.
}}

==Explanation==
[[White Hat]] says that problems in society could be avoided if people relied on logic and science rather than feelings—but when [[Cueball]] presses him to back up his claim, White Hat insists that his claim must be true, because ''it just seems obvious'' (to White Hat), and what the opposition (which he dismissively refers to as "these idiots") believes is crap in his opinion. Since White Hat refers to all people in general and since he falls in the same trap as he complains about, using his feelings for his case instead of logic and science, White Hat's argument is both fallacious and hypocritical.

The title text is White Hat's opinion, where he states that he has always said that people just need more {{w|common sense}}. He then adds, but not the kind of common sense that lets them figure out that he is condescending (i.e. talking down to them) and basically thinks that they are stupid. If they did, they would probably realize that White Hat considers himself smarter than them, and likely feel insulted and take retribution. (At the same time, he may himself lack this form of "common sense," as Cueball's question could be seen as a veiled insult highlighting White Hat's hypocrisy.)

When people talk about "common sense", they often really mean "they should think like I do". Using a term like "common sense" as a proxy for one's personal point of view implies that everyone else should have the same point of view. This discredits the fact that each person has their own point of view, completely valid to their own mind, and any attempts to push someone else's idea of a "common sense" upon them usually feels like "being talked down to" because of the implicit "fact" that that person's point of view is "common" and makes "sense", and therefore they must be smarter than you if you don't agree with their "common sense".

Ironically, there is some inconclusive scientific evidence against White Hat's position. It is possible that effective rational thought depends on feelings and emotions as a preprocessing step. For example, people with damage to the {{w|ventromedial prefrontal cortex}} lose their ability to have gut reactions to decision options. In {{w|Antonio Damasio}}'s research, they were unable to make good decisions in everyday life. This may be because every option seems emotionally as good as any other and the brain is not good at conscious processing of large numbers of alternatives. See ''{{w|Descartes' Error}}'' by Damasio (1994) and ''{{w|The Righteous Mind}}'' by Haidt (2012).

==Transcript==

:[White Hat is spreading his arms and facing Cueball.]
:White Hat: We wouldn't have all these problems if people just learned to be more ''logical'' and ''science-driven'' instead of relying on ''feelings''.
:Cueball: Oh? What study are you basing that on?
:White Hat: It just seems obvious!
:White Hat: I mean, look at the crap these idiots believe!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

241: Battle Room

2022-05-11T17:52:07Z

Lumpman2: Undo revision 265593 by 👖🔥 (talk)

{{comic
| number = 241
| date = March 28, 2007
| title = Battle Room
| image = battle_room.png
| titletext = Bean actually sabotaged it just to give Dink the excuse to make that joke.
}}

==Explanation==
The book ''{{w|Ender's Game}}'' by {{w|Orson Scott Card}} is about {{w|Ender Wiggin}}, a boy of extraordinary intelligence, which means he is recruited to be trained to be one of the commanders of Earth's "Defense" Fleet should the {{w|Formics|Buggers}} invade again (future books renamed the Buggers to the Formics, to be more politically correct, since in British English, bugger is a swear word meaning to engage in anal sex, and an insult, as in "you silly bugger"). Ender is taken to a space school called Battle School. At the center of Battle School is the Battle Room, where all the training revolves (literally and figuratively) around. Ender's Game has also been discussed in later comics like [[635: Locke and Demosthenes]] and [[304: Nighttime Stories]].

The Battle Room is described as a hollow perfect cube. "Stars" (smaller cubes) can be pulled from the walls (without changing the shape, more stars come in to fill the space where the old ones were) and can be used as obstacles in the Battle Room, as they will remain absolutely stationary, no matter what force is exerted on them. There is no gravity in the Battle Room. Most squads entering the Battle Room keep their orientation from the hallway (gravity in the hallway dictates where "down" is in the Room). Ender realizes that because the room is a perfect cube, and that even the entrances, called "gates," are perfect squares and do not give any hint about which direction is up or down, that keeping that orientation is useless. He instructs his squad to orient so that the enemy's gate is down, a line of lateral thinking that gives his team three big advantages (smaller targets, "shielding" themselves with their own feet, and unprecedented angles of attack) and leads them to a perfect winning streak.

The joke here, as made by Ender's squadmate Dink, is that the enemy's gate is "down," as in broken. A computer or a website is said to be "down" when it stops operating or is unavailable, due to a cause such as a crash, the power is cut, or it is being taken offline for maintenance.

The title text suggests that the enemy's gate was sabotaged by Bean, another, possibly even smarter, friend of Ender's, for the sole reason of allowing Dink to make the joke. This reflects the developments in ''{{w|Ender's Shadow}}'', the {{w|parallel story}} to ''Ender's Game'', which showed that Bean was manipulating many of the events of the original book.

==Transcript==
:[A scene is depicted from the Battle Room of the novel Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. The boys are floating in a room with random cubes.]
:Dink: Sorry, Ender — seems like there were some system crashes. The battle's gotta be cut short.
:Ender: The lasers still work.
:Dink: Yeah, but the enemy's gate is down.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Fiction]]
[[Category:Ender's Game]]

2140: Reinvent the Wheel

2022-05-11T17:51:52Z

Lumpman2: Undo revision 265988 by 👖🔥 (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2140
| date = April 22, 2019
| title = Reinvent the Wheel
| image = reinvent_the_wheel.png
| titletext = Right now it's a bicycle wheel, so we've had to move to lighter vehicles, but the reduced overhead is worth it. There was one week when a wheel of cheese got dangerously close to the first page, though.
}}

==Explanation==
"{{w|Reinventing the wheel}}" is an idiom/metaphor that refers to duplicate effort to recreate something that has already been created or perfected previously without adding any value in the process. The phrase relates to the idea that the round {{w|wheel}} was invented a long time ago and there is no way to make it better, as a circle is the most optimal shape. While the phrase includes the word "wheel", it isn't typically directly associated with the wheel but instead uses the word "wheel" because of the easily understandable meaning - a simple object with no improvements that can be made. That being said, we have actually reinvented the wheel at one point in time - a {{w|tire}} is a modern improvement to the wheel, which reduces bumps and shocks that people in the car would feel from uneven road surfaces.

In this comic, [[Beret Guy]] works for an automotive company (or this is his [[:Category:Beret Guy's Business|own company]]), and he is explaining to Ponytail their decision to not reinvent the wheel for the automobiles that they produce, using the phrase in a literal sense instead of figuratively. Instead of determining for themselves what wheel to use, they want to use whichever wheel is presumably considered the "best" wheel by the world, using a daily Google image search for "wheel" to determine the highest ranked wheel, and then using that wheel on the vehicles they produce that day. In reality, this would be a very bad way of choosing the wheels of the automobiles Beret Guy's company produces. In addition to being extremely inefficient, as they might have to change the wheels they use every day, it may also result in copyrights and lawsuits against his company.

The point of the comic is to make fun of programmers who take the idea that you should never reinvent the wheel too seriously. When these people have a problem, they may Google to find a solution to that problem, and when they find a piece of online code, they use it in their own code, even if it wasn't initially designed to handle the task for which it is being used and thus may have unintended side effects or other issues.

Another way that programmers may go too far in avoiding reinventing the wheel is in using external dependencies. It can be valuable to use external libraries, especially for applications where certain tasks have strange edge cases that a 'reinvention' is likely to miss or require lots of development effort to correctly implement (like [https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time time]). However, using someone else's code means taking on the risk of security vulnerabilities, and when the library is updated on live installations, the user also takes on the risk that the library might become unavailable or otherwise break. In this case, Beret Guy's company updates their wheel "library" on a daily basis from Google's image search. Google is unlikely to shut down a core search product, but they might change the API that Beret Guy's company uses (unless he's just going to their website himself), and they have been known to shut down projects that people like, such as [https://www.google.com/reader/about/ Google Reader]. On the day this comic was released, Randall changed the [[Design_of_xkcd.com#Header_text|Header text]] of xkcd, adding a [[xkcd_Header_text#2019-04-23_-_Google_Reader|reference to Google Reader]].

The popular programming language Python manages external dependencies with packages called "wheels" which are "published to the cheese shop", which may or may not be an intended reference.

In any event, Beret Guy is in effect reinventing the wheel by doing a new search for wheels on Google Images every day. If the wheel he finds on Google Images on a given day is suitable for his company's needs, the company would likely be better off using the same wheel on succeeding days (unless circumstances change which make that unfeasible), compared to trying to doing a new search for wheels every day. In addition, Beret Guy's company might be forced to create new wheel-producing machinery every day, although if Beret Guy can transmit [[1293: Job Interview|soup]] and [[1395: Power Cord|air]] through electrical cords, it may simply be a matter of copying the image then pasting it in real life.

The title text indicates that Beret Guy is currently using bicycle wheels for his vehicles, requiring his vehicles to be lighter as bicycle wheels cannot carry a lot of weight. He says this "reduce[s] overhead", which is both literally true, that his vehicle weighs less, and refers to the usual figurative desire of reducing overhead costs of development by using external libraries. If the former interpretation is correct, this raises the question of why Beret Guy's company didn't try to lighten the load of its vehicles beforehand. Finally, the narrator (supposedly Beret Guy) explains that at one point a wheel of cheese was near the top of the Google images search. If it had reached the top, it would have been disastrous as a wheel of cheese is completely unsuited for use as a vehicle's wheel.{{Citation needed}} Beret Guy implies that his company would have used it if it reached the first position even though he knows that it would be unsuitable for usage in vehicles, further demonstrating Beret Guy's lack of business knowledge.

On the day the comic was released a bicycle wheel came up first when searching for "wheel", see image in the [[#Trivia|Trivia]] section below.

==Transcript==
:[Beret Guy is talking to Ponytail.]
:Beret Guy: We don't want to reinvent the wheel, so every day we Google image search "wheel", and whatever object comes up, that's what we attach to our vehicles.
:Beret Guy: Sure, external dependencies carry risks, but so far they've all been pretty good wheels.

==Trivia==
*On the day this comic came out a Google search on Wheel would in some cases have a bicycle wheel at the top:
:[[File:2140_Reinvent_the_Wheel_Google_Search_Wheel.png|400px]]
*The JavaScript development community has had several security and reliability incidents caused by over-dependence on automated package updates. In 2016, a JavaScript developer [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/ un-published several libraries] (including one "library" which was just an eleven-line function for padding strings, which was nevertheless included in thousands of projects and downloaded millions of times a month) from the npm package repository. This broke projects that depended on them and, until npm un-un-published his packages (with new maintainers), also opened the possibility that a bad actor could register malicious projects under those names and hijack all of their dependents. In July 2018, an attacker gained access to the npm account of an ESLint maintainer and [https://eslint.org/blog/2018/07/postmortem-for-malicious-package-publishes published malicious versions of their packages], and in September 2018, the event-stream library was taken over by a malicious maintainer who [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/26/npm_repo_bitcoin_stealer/ added code to look for and steal bitcoins from the users who installed it].

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Beret Guy's Business]]

2353: Hurricane Hunters

2022-05-11T17:47:59Z

Lumpman2: Undo revision 266290 by 👖🔥 (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2353
| date = August 31, 2020
| title = Hurricane Hunters
| image = hurricane_hunters.png
| titletext = Our flight gathered valuable data on whether a commercial airliner in the eye of a hurricane can do a loop.
}}

==Explanation==

The comic strip opens with [[Black Hat]] explaining to [[Cueball]] (who is presumed to be some government official) that flying into hurricanes, while risky, provides valuable scientific data. Although the {{w|Eye (cyclone)|eye}} itself is relatively calm, it is surrounded by the '''eyewall''', a region of extremely intense thunderstorms. Thus, the danger of flying through such storms must be carefully weighed against the scientific knowledge being gained. In the real world, such missions are conducted by highly-trained pilots with specialized aircraft, such as the {{w|NOAA Hurricane Hunters}} and the US Air Force's {{w|53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron}} (also nicknamed "Hurricane Hunters").

However, Cueball's comment in the third panel shows that Black Hat is not discussing the activity of hurricane hunting in general, but rather is attempting to justify his decision to fly a passenger jet through the eye of a hurricane. Passenger airliners are not meant to fly into hurricanes,{{Citation needed}} and can easily crash there. It's not clear if Black Hat is (somehow) a jet pilot himself, has come into ownership of an airline and was merely directing a flight, or, probably [[72|most likely]], simply hijacked the flight he happened to be on, but the commercial jet passengers were not expecting to "participate" in a hurricane hunting mission. Black Hat replies that, instead of being upset, the passengers should be proud of their contributions to meteorology, but their contribution is probably negligible, as they were not actively collecting useful scientific data.

This comic is likely referencing both {{w|Hurricane Laura}}, which was active during the week prior to this comic strip's publication, and {{w|Microsoft_Flight_Simulator_(2020_video_game)|Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020}}, which players have been utilising the software's ability to simulate real-time weather to fly into and explore the (virtual) aforementioned hurricane. The simulator currently only has passenger aircraft available to pilot, echoing Black Hat's flying of a commercial jet into a hurricane. A similar situation where historical/well-documented experimental techniques are used in inappropriate situations occurs in [[1594: Human Subjects]], albeit by test subjects rather than “researchers”, if Black Hat can be called that.

In the title text, Black Hat says that their flight gathered data on the ''possibility'' of making loops in the eye of the hurricane by passenger airliners, but if it had ''actually done'' a loop, he probably would have said so.

The {{w|Boeing 707}} ''was'' made to successfully execute a {{w|barrel roll}} and fly inverted [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/60-years-ago-the-famous-boeing-707-barrel-roll-over-lake-washington/ during a 1955 test flight]. If no flight envelope protections are active, barrel rolls are possible with any aircraft and any helicopter, because the aircraft and its fuel systems only experience mild and positive g loads, never negative ones. Likewise, the air flow stays the same as in level flight. Problematic is ending the barrel roll, as there is a possibility of exceeding the safe speed limits.

Another passenger jet that was barrel-rolled is the {{w|Concorde}}. Pilots {{w|Brian Walpole}} and Jean Franchi did on a test flight - not once, but several times.

Loops are a lot more problematic because of the speeds reached when ending the maneuver, and the speed needed to begin it. But like the barrel roll, a loop ''can'' be flown while only experiencing mild and positive g loads. In fact, {{w|Harold E. Thompson}} flew several loopings in a {{w|Sikorsky S-52}}, a helicopter first flown in 1947. Prolonged inverted flights, though, cause negative g forces, an altered air flow, and cause havoc with the fuel systems, parts of which are gravity-driven. Aircraft that can fly inverted for longer than a few seconds are specifically designed, for example aerobatic aircraft and fighter jets.

It is possible that this is his justification of why the flight contributed to meteorology. However, passenger airliners' abilities to do loops has nothing to do with that field of science. Moreover, the same data could be gathered by flying the same airliner without passengers, or with willing ones.

==Transcript==

:[Black hat facing left]
:Black Hat: Yes, flying into the eye of a hurricane is dangerous.

:[Cueball on left at a desk being addressed by Black Hat on the right]
:Black Hat: But it provides us with crucial data that helps us understand and predict these storms.

:[Same as previous cell, with Black Hat raising his hand]
:Cueball: But your passengers had bought tickets to St. Louis.
:Black Hat: They should be ''proud'' of our contributions to meteorology!

==Trivia==
:Everything on Cueball's desk has gone missing in panel 3.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Hurricanes]]

2616: Deep End

2022-05-07T02:55:38Z

Lumpman2:

{{comic
| number = 2616
| date = May 6, 2022
| title = Deep End
| image = deep_end.png
| titletext = Hey! No running in the back-arc basin!
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by A SUBDUCTING SWIMMING POOL - I don't know how to get this to work, but I beat the bot to making it! Please finnish the explanation (Emphasis on the transcript and title text) - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Pools, like oceans, contain water. This comic produces a schematic for the former, derived from science about the latter. On Earth, the surface consists of tectonic plates which move around. In this comic, [[Randall]] equates Swimming pools with {{w|plate tectonics}}, to explain how deep ends form in said pools. Unfortunately, swimming pools aren't really formed by plate tectonics{{Citation needed}}.

A {{w|swimming pool}} is a pool, typically used for swimming {{Citation needed}}. Most of these have a deep end and a shallow end. This is intentional, likely to accomadate for new swimmers to have somewhere to stand while accommodating for more confident swimmers for whom the floor would get in the way{{Actual citation needed}}.

{{w|Subduction}}, a geological process in which one plate slips beneath another and is forced down into the mantle, is shown here as the reason swimming pools have deep ends. This usually takes place between continental plates and oceanic plates, although it could happen with two oceanic plates. The comic depicts the former; an oceanic plate subducting under a continental one.

On the left image, there is the shallow end. The water is the shallow end is the shallowest in the pool, about the height of [[Megan]], excluding her head. Going right from there, the pool floor (Representing the oceanic plate) begins to curve downwards towards the subduction zone. As the floor goes down, the water gets deeper{{Citation needed}}. In the deepest area, it is labeled "Deep End"

At the bottom of the deep end, there is a curve and a deposit on the plate/pool floor. This is likely sediment buildup from waterborne debris that has settled there. Under the sediment, there are some small bubbles of trapped water. This implies that the plate is moving left-to-right across the image. Some of the bubbles are dragged along by the oceanic plate, while others float up through continental plate until they reach the "Splash zone"

A splash zone is an area of a waterpark with water{{citation needed}} being sprayed around, causing splashed{{Actual citation needed}}. In this comic, the splash zone is actually geysers, fed by the bubbles of water from the subduction. In reality, subduction zones do create similar effects: water moving up from subducting plates is the origin of many {{W|volcanic arc|volcanic arcs}}. Volcanic systems sometimes include features such as the geysers depicted in the comic.

While it may seem a little far-fetched, [https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/thirsty-mantle-subduction-zones-swallow-more-water-thought/ subduction zones do actually swallow large amounts of water]. This causes a lot of interesting effects, like new types of rocks and other stuff. These are probably explained in [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016703714002610 this scientific paper], although I'm not 100% sure as I didn't actually read past the title.

Can someone else work out what a back-arc basin is please?

Other comics that mention unusual tectonic plate motion include [[1388: Subduction License]] and [[1874: Geologic Faults]]

==Transcript==

{{incomplete transcript}}

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics]]

2614: 2

2022-05-03T06:06:47Z

Lumpman2: Undo revision 231981 by 172.70.179.20 (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2614
| date = May 2, 2022
| title = 2
| image = 2.png
| titletext = It's like sigma summation notation, except instead of summing the argument over all values of i, you 2 the argument over all values of 2.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by 2 squared - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This demonstrates the different ways in which the number 2 can be typeset in various scientific fields.

The dotted box represents any character (presumably a letter or bigram of letters). The number 2 preceding this character is a coefficient in regular math (algebra). The number 2 as a superscript means take the second power (i.e., square whatever precedes it) in physics or regular math, while in normal text, a superscript 2 is usually used to indicate a footnote. The number 2 as a subscript can be used, in chemistry, to show how many atoms of a particular element are present in a molecule (e.g., H2O). A subscript 2,2 shows the second element on the second row of a matrix, but if the comma is replaced by a semicolon, it becomes a common notation for the {{w|Covariant derivative}} of a tensor field, which is commonly used in the mathematics of general relativity. The number 2 in parentheses would normally be the argument to a function (e.g., f(2)), but in group theory, the number 2 in parentheses could indicate a cyclic subgroup or ideal generated by two or a special case of cycle notation for elements of symmetry groups used to mean an element that keeps 2 fixed. A symbol centered underneath another symbol is normally reserved for doing summations, where the big symbol is Σ, or some other operation applied to a sequence of numbers; it does not make sense to have a single number there, as indicated in the alt text. The prepended super and subscripts are often used in nuclear chemistry, with the superscript representing the mass number and the subscript representing the atomic number.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

[An apparently scientific expression:]

2 [superscript:] 2 [subscript:] 2 [normal text:] [an empty box] [superscript:] 2 [subscript:] 2;2 [normal text:] (2) [beneath the last 2:] 2

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Chemistry]]

1901: Logical

2020-10-09T16:14:09Z

Lumpman2:

848: 3D

2017-11-04T22:13:24Z

Lumpman2:

{{comic
| number = 848
| date = January 17, 2011
| title = 3D
| image = 3d.png
| titletext = The LINACs in the glasses frames can barely manage one MeV. You should've gone to the screening at CERN.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|String theory}} hypothesizes that there are many more than 3 dimensions, it's just that we can't see the rest because they're "rolled up." A common metaphor is an ant on a tightrope — it has two degrees of freedom, one along the rope and one around it, but from far away we can only see one.

So [[Black Hat]] released his 2D movie about string theory in "3D", and claimed that the third dimension was there — just too small to see.

The title text refers to {{w|linear particle accelerators}}, or "LINACs," which are used to create high-energy particles. Incidentally, the glasses give their particles one mega-electronvolt (symbol {{w|MeV}}) of energy, which is not particularly high for a particle accelerator. The title text suggests that such moviegoers should try the accelerators at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, {{w|CERN}}, since they are widely known for producing the highest energies in the millions of MeV, and thus have the best chance of unraveling the small dimensions of string theory.

On the xk3d prank site, the 3D on this comic is not visible.

==Transcript==
:[People are lined up to see a movie.]
:Premiering Tonight:
:String Theory:
:An Exposé
:Presented In 3D!

:[The people are in a dark theater, fiddling with their glasses.]
:''???''

:[The people approach black hat guy, who's sitting at a desk.]
:Megan: Your movie was a ripoff.
:Cueball: It wasn't 3D at all!
:Black Hat: Was too.
:Black Hat: It's just that the third dimension is tightly rolled up and too small to observe at normal energies.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]
[[Category:Physics]]

1904: Research Risks

2017-10-18T16:54:44Z

Lumpman2:

{{comic
| number = 1904
| date = October 18, 2017
| title = Research Risks
| image = research_risks.png
| titletext = The 1919 Great Boston Molasses Flood remained the deadliest confectionery containment accident until the Canadian Space Agency's 2031 orbital maple syrup delivery disaster.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This is a comparison of the possibility of the subjects of various sciences being a threat to humanity. It can either be an autonomous threat to the local population (i.e. by escape from a lab), or as part of a supervillain's scheme to rule the world. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBkT19uH2RQ]

{| class="wikitable sortable"
! Risk of Breaking Free !! Risk of Supervillain !! Research field !! Comments
|-
| 1 very low || very high || Prosthetics || Cyborgs
|-
| 2 low || high || Neuroscience || Mind Control
|-
| 1 very low || high || Laser Optics || See {{w|Directed-energy weapon}}
|-
| 3 medium low || high || Pharmacology || Poisons
|-
| 2 low || high || Materials Science ||
|-
| 2 low || medium high || Sociology ||
|-
| 1 very low || medium high || History ||
|-
| 3 medium low || medium high || Psychology ||
|-
| high || very high || Robotics ||
|-
| high || very high || Genetic Engineering ||
|-
| medium high || high || Chemistry ||
|-
| very high || high || Microbiology || See {{w|Grey goo}}
|-
| 1 very low || medium low || Geology || Study of rocks
|-
| 1 very low || medium low || Linguistics ||
|-
| 2 low || low || Paleontology || Study of pre-history, aka archeology
|-
| 1 very low || very low || Astronomy ||
|-
| 3 medium low || very low || Molasses Storage || See {{w|Great Molasses Flood}}
|-
| 1 very low || very low || Dentistry ||
|-
| medium high || medium low || Botany || Study of plants
|-
| high || medium low || Entomology || Study of insects
|-
| medium high || low || Mycology || Mycology is the study of fungi, fungi cannot move and therefore not easily escape
|-
| very high || low || Marine Biology || Sharknado
|-
| medium high || very low || Ornithology || Study of birds, flying is a useful escape mechanism
|-
|}

==Trivia==
* The comic initially had the erroneous spelling "Entymology" (possibly a mistaken mix-up between etymology and entomology, similar to [[1012: Wrong Superhero]]). This was later changed to the correct "Entomology".

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A chart with two crossing lines with double arrows. Each arrow is labeled:]
:X axis left: Low
:X axis right: High
:Y axis top: High
:Y axis bottom: Low

:[To the side of each of the axes, they are labeled:}
:X axis: Risk of the thing you're studying breaking free from your facility and threatening the local population
:Y axis: Risk of your research being used by a supervillian for world domination

{{comic discussion}}

155: Search History

2017-09-16T04:56:27Z

Lumpman2:

{{comic
| number = 155
| date = September 11, 2006
| title = Search History
| image = search_history.png
| titletext = SomethingAwful has a wonderful compilation of crazy AOL searches in their Weekend Web archives, 2006-08-13.
}}

==Explanation==
The comic references the {{w|AOL search data leak}}, where users had potentially identifying and embarrassing search histories published. Randall thus publishes his own potentially embarrassing searches. All of his searches relate to his fear of dinosaurs as a consequence of Jurassic Park. The search "{{w|Utahraptor}}" may be a reference to Dinosaur Comics, which XKCD has parodied in [[145: Parody Week: Dinosaur Comics]]. Alternatively, "Utahraptor" may be referenced because the raptors portrayed in Jurassic Park were much more like utahraptors than velociraptors in terms of size.

The title text refers to a document posted on a humor site: [http://www.somethingawful.com/d/weekend-web/aol-search-log.php link (part 1)] [http://www.somethingawful.com/d/weekend-web/aol-search-log-2.php link (part 2)], [http://www.somethingawful.com/d/weekend-web/aol-search-log-3.php link (part 3]).

==Transcript==
:Cueball: In solidarity with the many AOL users whose often embarrassing web searches were released to the public, I offer a sample of my own search history:
:[There is a screencap of Google's front page with the following entries suggested for autocompletion below the search box:]
:velociraptors
:site:imdb.com "jurassic park"
:raptors
:dromaeosaurids
:utahraptor
:"home depot" deadbolts
:security home improvement
:surviving a raptor attack
:robert bakker paleontologist
:robert bakker "possible raptor sympathizer"
:site:en.wikipedia.org surviving a raptor attack
:learning from mistakes in jurassic park
:big-game rifles
:tire irons
:treating raptor wounds
:do raptors fear fire
:how to make a molotov cocktail
:do raptors fear death
:can raptors pick locks
:how to tell if my neighbors are raptors.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Velociraptors]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Google Search]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]

1862: Particle Properties

2017-07-12T16:51:48Z

Lumpman2: added table and a few explanations

{{comic
| number = 1862
| date = July 12, 2017
| title = Particle Properties
| image = particle_properties.png
| titletext = Each particle also has a password which allows its properties to be changed, but the cosmic censorship hypothesis suggests we can never observe the password itself—only its secure hash.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Table needs to be filled out with remaining explanations}}
A table is presented comparing the range (maxmium and minimum value) and scale (how big number increments are) of several measures. The table begins by listing properties pertinent to {{w|particle physics}} as the title sugests, but after failing to provide a good indication of {{w|Flavour (particle physics)|flavor}}, quickly devolves to other domains, such as role playing games (such as D&D) and sports.

{| class=wikitable
! Property
! Scale
! Explanation
|-
| Electric charge
| [0,1]
|
|-
| Mass
| [0,∞) in kg
| Mass is the measure of an object or particle's resistance to force. Theoretically, any object's mass could approach infinity, but mass cannot be below 0. Some particles, such as photons, have zero rest mass and are therefore massless.
|-
| Spin number
| (-∞,∞) (Intervals of 1/2)
|
|-
| Flavor
| Misc. quantum numbers
|
|-
| Color charge
| Color wheel representing R, G, B
|
|-
| Mood
| [:( , :)] on a number line
|
|-
| Alignment
| 3x3 grid with varying shades (columns Good-Evil, rows Lawful-Chaotic)
|
|-
| Hit points
| (0,∞)
| Video games often have values for players and other entities that represent health (also called hit points or HP). Generally there is not necessarily a limit on this value, but it does not often go below 0 as the zero value is considered "dead" (or some equivalent).
|-
| Rating
| 5-star scale
|
|-
| String type
| Bytestring-Charstring
|
|-
| Batting average
| [0,100)
|
|-
| Proof
| [0,200)
| This refers to {{w|alcohol proof}}, which is the measure of the amount of ethanol in a beverage by volume. The proof of a beverage is two times the percentage of ethanol, so the maximum value is 200.
|-
| Heat
| No jalapeños - 3 jalapeños, increasing
| Spicy peppers are measured by the intensity of the spicy flavor, usually ranging from values like "mild" to "hot". The gray jalapeño likely represents negligible or no spicy taste in the food.
|-
| Street value
| [0,∞) in $
|
|-
| Entropy
| ''This already has like 20 different confusing meanings, so it probably means something here, too.''
|
|}

The term "entropy", which {{w|History of entropy|began}} as a {{w|Entropy (classical thermodynamics)|thermodynamic measure}}, has since been adopted {{w|Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory|by analogy}} into {{w|Entropy (disambiguation)|multiple seemingly unrelated domains}}. The table doesn't seem to know what domain it is in, but (possibly in a desperate attempt to hide this) deems it safe to assume the unknown domain uses the term "entropy" for ''something''!

The "Alignment" tab corresponds with the {{w|Alignment (Dungeons & Dragons)|Alignments}} grid of ''{{w|Dungeons & Dragons}}'', where characters are traditionally given one of nine ideological alignments, with "Lawful", "Neutral" and "Chaotic" on one axis and "Good", "Neutral" and "Evil" on the other. This may be a reference to the now defunct names of the two heaviest known quarks: truth and beauty.

The charge is shown in increments of a third from -1 to +1 which are the only know charges of the fundamental particles, there are some exotic, particles with twice integer charge e.g. the recently discovered double charmed Xi baryon

Spin is an intrinsic properties of particles, Spin is a relativistic form of angular momentum. The spin of a particle determines what statistics the particle follows, half odd integer spin particles are classified as fermions and integer spin particles are bosons.
Two fermions cannot have exactly the same state, this is the Pauli exclusion principle.
Flavor is a series of quantum numbers that do not fit neatly onto a set of dimensional axis
Color charge can be Red Green or Blue, the color of a particle must sum to white so a particle can be RGB or Red anti-Red or equivalent. The color charge confines the quarks, separating quarks requires so much energy that jets of particles are created, so color is a property inferred as it cannot be observed on its own. This is the last entry currently used to describe particles by particle physicists.
Mood particles are not considered to have emotion but Randdal implies that there is a quantized 5 point scale which would have some effect of the properties of the particle.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:<big>Particle Properties in Physics</big>
{| class=wikitable
! Property
! Type/scale
|-
| Electric charge
| [Scale with -1, 0 and +1 labeled]
|-
| Mass
| [Scale with 0, 1kg and 2kg labeled]
|-
| Spin number
| [Scale with -1, -½ 0, ½ and 1 labeled]
|-
| Flavor
| (Misc. quantum numbers)
|-
| Color charge
| [3D plot with R, G and B axes] (Quarks only)
|-
| Mood
| [Scale with 5 emoticons, from angry to happy]
|-
| Alignment
| [Shaded 3x3 grid] Good-evil, lawful chaotic
|-
| Hit points
| [Scale starting from 0]
|-
| Rating
| [Star rating of 3.5/5 stars]
|-
| String type
| Bytestring-Charstring
|-
| Batting average
| [Scale from 0% to 100%]
|-
| Proof
| [Scale from 0 to 200]
|-
| Heat
| [Scale labeled with pepper icons, from 0 to 3]
|-
| Street value
| [Scale with $0, $100 and $200 labeled]
|-
| Entropy
| (This already has like 20 different confusing meanings, so it probably means something here, too.)
|}

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Physics]]

1862: Particle Properties

2017-07-12T16:35:08Z

Lumpman2:

{{comic
| number = 1862
| date = July 12, 2017
| title = Particle Properties
| image = particle_properties.png
| titletext = Each particle also has a password which allows its properties to be changed, but the cosmic censorship hypothesis suggests we can never observe the password itself—only its secure hash.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|needs a table to explain the table (namely what do each of the properties mean)}}
A table is presented comparing the range (maxium and minimum value) and scale (how big number increments are) of several measures. The table begins by listing properties pertinent to {{w|particle physics}} as the title sugests, but after failing to provide a good indication of {{w|Flavour (particle physics)|flavor}}, quickly devolves to other domains, such as role playing games (such as D&D) and sports.

{| class=wikitable
! Property
! Scale
! Explanation
|-
| Electric charge
| [0,1]
|
|-
| Mass
| [0,∞) in kg
|
|-
| Spin number
| (-∞,∞) (Intervals of 1/2)
|
|-
| Flavor
| Misc. quantum numbers
|
|-
| Color charge
| Color wheel representing R, G, B
|
|-
| Mood
| [:( , :)] on a number line
|
|-
| Alignment
| 3x3 grid with varying shades (columns Good-Evil, rows Lawful-Chaotic)
|
|-
| Hit points
| (0,∞)
|
|-
| Rating
| 5-star scale
|
|-
| String type
| Bytestring-Charstring
|
|-
| Batting average
| [0,100)
|
|-
| Proof
| [0,200)
|
|-
| Heat
| No jalapeños - 3 jalapeños, increasing
|
|-
| Street value
| [0,∞) in $
|
|-
| Entropy
| ''This already has like 20 different confusing meanings, so it probably means something here, too.''
|
|}

The term "entropy", which {{w|History of entropy|began}} as a {{w|Entropy (classical thermodynamics)|thermodynamic measure}}, has since been adopted {{w|Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory|by analogy}} into {{w|Entropy (disambiguation)|multiple seemingly unrelated domains}}. The table doesn't seem to know what domain it is in, but (possibly in a desperate attempt to hide this) deems it safe to assume the unknown domain uses the term "entropy" for ''something''!

"Proof" refers to {{w|alcohol proof}}, which is the measure of the amount of ethanol in a beverage. In ranges from 0 to 200, with 200 proof referring to something that is 100% alcohol by volume.

The "Alignment" tab corresponds with the {{w|Alignment (Dungeons & Dragons)|Alignments}} grid of ''{{w|Dungeons & Dragons}}'', where characters are traditionally given one of nine ideological alignments, with "Lawful", "Neutral" and "Chaotic" on one axis and "Good", "Neutral" and "Evil" on the other. This may be a reference to the now defunct names of the two heaviest known quarks: truth and beauty.
Hit points are a system used in many games to determine when a character dies, or is so injured that they can no longer act effectively, in D&D it is possible for a character to have negative hit points but not die.

The charge is shown in increments of a third from -1 to +1 which are the only know charges of the fundamental particles, there are some exotic, particles with twice integer charge e.g. the recently discovered double charmed Xi baryon

Mass is a scalar, all known particles have rest mass greater than or equal to zero, Tachyons are hypothetical and it is also possible to select a reference frame where the mas is greater or equal to zero.

Spin is an intrinsic properties of particles, Spin is a relativistic form of angular momentum. The spin of a particle determines what statistics the particle follows, half odd integer spin particles are classified as fermions and integer spin particles are bosons.
Two fermions cannot have exactly the same state, this is the Pauli exclusion principle.
Flavor is a series of quantum numbers that do not fit neatly onto a set of dimensional axis
Color charge can be Red Green or Blue, the color of a particle must sum to white so a particle can be RGB or Red anti-Red or equivalent. The color charge confines the quarks, separating quarks requires so much energy that jets of particles are created, so color is a property inferred as it cannot be observed on its own. This is the last entry currently used to describe particles by particle physicists.
Mood particles are not considered to have emotion but Randdal implies that there is a quantized 5 point scale which would have some effect of the properties of the particle.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:<big>Particle Properties in Physics</big>
{| class=wikitable
! Property
! Type/scale
|-
| Electric charge
| [Scale with -1, 0 and +1 labeled]
|-
| Mass
| [Scale with 0, 1kg and 2kg labeled]
|-
| Spin number
| [Scale with -1, -½ 0, ½ and 1 labeled]
|-
| Flavor
| (Misc. quantum numbers)
|-
| Color charge
| [3D plot with R, G and B axes] (Quarks only)
|-
| Mood
| [Scale with 5 emoticons, from angry to happy]
|-
| Alignment
| [Shaded 3x3 grid] Good-evil, lawful chaotic
|-
| Hit points
| [Scale starting from 0]
|-
| Rating
| [Star rating of 3.5/5 stars]
|-
| String type
| Bytestring-Charstring
|-
| Batting average
| [Scale from 0% to 100%]
|-
| Proof
| [Scale from 0 to 200]
|-
| Heat
| [Scale labeled with pepper icons, from 0 to 3]
|-
| Street value
| [Scale with $0, $100 and $200 labeled]
|-
| Entropy
| (This already has like 20 different confusing meanings, so it probably means something here, too.)
|}

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Physics]]

1833: Code Quality 3

2017-05-05T21:37:32Z

Lumpman2: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1833
| date = May 5, 2017
| title = Code Quality 3
| image = code_quality_3.png
| titletext = It's like a half-solved cryptogram where the solution is a piece of FORTH code written by someone who doesn't know FORTH.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Still needs to explain what example code is.}}

This comic is a direct continuation of [[1513: Code Quality]] and [[1695: Code Quality 2]] in the [[:Category:Code Quality|Code Quality]] series, in which Ponytail continually insults Cueball's code style. In this comic, as in the previous, Cueball does not directly appear, only speaking off-panel; however, as it is a continuation of the series, it is clear that this is Cueball's code.

In the first panel, Ponytail references {{w|query string|query strings}}, which store information, such as search queries or page numbers, relevant to the URL. Query strings are not meant to be especially human-readable, so a song based on one would likely not be a good one{{Citation needed}}.

A tactical flashlight is a light that can be mounted on a gun for use in low-light scenarios. They tend to be very durable and very bright. Different models have different features and capabilities, so they are given cool-sounding model numbers. A JSON table of these model numbers would look like random data.

{{w|Alan Turing}} was a British theoretical computer scientist, often considered the father of the field. His 1936 paper outlined Turing machines, a theoretical model for computing, as well as computability and the halting problem. Theoretical computer science is very different from practical coding; understanding the contents of the paper would not at all help a coder to understand today's algorithms, design patterns, and best practices. This is only slightly helped by a page of Javascript example code. Javascript is a popular programming language, and example code is used to explain a concept in programming or demonstrate how a program works. "Guessing everything in between" would involve attempting to write code using skills that could range anywhere from the most basic programming to Turing's extremely advanced ideas.

In the final panel, Ponytail references {{w|leet|leet-speak}}, in which symbols are replaced with similar-looking symbols, and a {{w|manifesto}}, a statement of a person or group's beliefs and intentions. A manifesto from a survivalist cult leader might be nonsensical, even before being translated to leet-speak. Memory allocation is a low-level computer programming concept; most modern languages have features that take care of memory allocation for the programmer, possibly implying that Cueball does not know how to use these features.

At this point Cueball, quickly becoming impatient with Ponytail's sass, retorts that if she can't start giving him the constructive criticism that he's looking for, he can always find someone else to replace her. Ponytail smugly responds that nobody else would be able to stomach his code for more than one sitting, and that she's the only one he's got.

{{w|Forth_(programming_language)#Programmer.27s_perspective|Forth}} is an old programming language that tends to be difficult to read. A {{w|cryptogram}} is a cipher puzzle, generally one easy enough to be solved manually. The title text implies that the code is so bad that it looks like unreadable FORTH code that is missing random characters.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail sitting in front of a computer screen typing. Cueball speaks only off-panel, but since this is a direct continuation of comic 1513 and 1695: Code Quality and Code Quality 2 where Cueball is shown, there can be no doubt it is him.]
:Ponytail: Your code looks like song lyrics written using only the stuff that comes after the question mark in a URL.
:Cueball (off-panel): Sorry.
:[Zoom in on Ponytail's upper body.]
:Ponytail: It's like a JSON table of model numbers for flashlights with "tactical" in their names.
:[Zoom back out again. Ponytail has lifted her hands off the table.]
:Ponytail: Like you read Turing's 1936 paper on computing and a page of JavaScript example code and guessed at everything in between.
:[Zoom in again on Ponytail's face.]
:Ponytail: It's like a leet-speak translation of a manifesto by a survivalist cult leader who's for some reason obsessed with memory allocation.
:Cueball (off-panel): I can get someone else to review my code.
:Ponytail: Not more than once, I bet.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Code Quality]]