Talk:2884: Log Alignment
so does anybody know how a video with a misaligned log scale even looks? like what does a log scale even mean for a video? 172.71.99.18 19:30, 22 January 2024 (UTC)mstrofcmdy209
- I think he's suggesting that the video shows the changes in a graph over time, and the misalignment could also change during the video. Barmar (talk) 20:47, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
- Imagine that a plot is just a 2D picture, or even more fundamentally as a function taking two variables and returning a pixel color. Changing an axis of the plot to be logarithmic is equivalent to applying a non-uniform scaling to one of the input variables to that function. In this comic that non-uniform scaling has instead been applied along an axis that does not correspond to either the X or Y axes but instead some combination of the two. A video can similarly be thought of as a function of 3 variables (X, Y, T) and so the non-uniform log scaling could be applied along an axis that is some combination of the X, T, and T axes. 172.71.154.252 23:37, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
- it's time, probably -jade 172.69.64.198 20:28, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
- LOG is also a video format, though I don't understand this well enough to discern whether this might be part of the joke or an unintentional coincidence.172.70.86.80 09:59, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
- It's not rendered in capitals, it's just "log." In log video formats, the logarithm of the pixel values is recorded, rather than the actual value. This results in a better match between the dynamic range of the camera and what is being recorded, so you get better precision in the values where it counts, and less precision where it doesn't. E.g. in an 8-bit linear scale, you have to round values between 3 and 4, because you can only record integers from 0 to 256. But in a made-up hypothetical 8-bit log scale where you take the base 10 log and multiply by some k (here let's say k=106.3, which is 256/log(256)), you could record your 3 as 51 (log(3)*k), 4 as 64, and you'd have everything from 51 to 63 to represent the values between 3 and 4 (e.g. 52 would be 3.08, 53 would be 3.15, 54 would be 3.22, etc.). The downside is that in exchange for that expansion at the low end, you'd to record both 224 and 225 as 250 (because they are 249.8 and 250.0), so you get dynamic range compression at the other end. It doesn't have much to do with this comic directly, because the the pixel values in this graph are either on (here grey rather than black) or off, no intermediate values. JohnHawkinson (talk) 14:46, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
- it's pretty common for videos to have flashbacks and scene changes. Graphing the electron beam for crt video would be pretty pretty straightforward, just wavy line(s) with pulses that mean go down one line and back the far "left."108.162.216.19 17:14, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
There seems to be a subtle relativity joke in the title text, with misalignments in both time and space being a reference to spacetime. 172.71.154.42 (talk) 00:05, 23 January 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
Shall we try to straighten out the plot with regards to the axes, leaving the log stripes all wavy? For kicks? -- Enfield (talk) 02:14, 23 January 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- https://xkcd.com/356/ Bischoff (talk) 08:33, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
I feel like this comic, along with others like 2023: Y-Axis and 2311: Confidence Interval should go in a category for misleading charts. -- 172.69.33.111 (talk) 02:23, 23 January 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- Can you create a chart to illustrate the use of chart comics?172.71.242.13 09:37, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
It may be interesting to refer to a tephigram instead of, or as well as, a SkewT-LogP as a tephigram has no normal axis. In my opinion, this makes the point even stronger. A tephigram shows the same lines as a SkewT-LogP but pressure is drawn as a curve, which straightens out the entropy lines. Temperature (te) and entropy (phi) lines are straight and normal to each other, but at around 45° to the page. 172.71.178.176 14:14, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
Hi, I'm new here! I created an "undistorted" version of the comic, and I would like to add it to the explanation, but the site is telling me I don't have permission to create new pages (in order to upload the file). How can I add it? Rayna (talk) 08:50, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
- There's some degree of activity necessary, as an anti-griefer measure. Not sure how much age/editing it might currently be set as (and it wouldn't be wise to have details stated outright, or dedicated wannabe griefers could do just enough standard and benign participation to then do what they really want).
- In the interim, you could still upload it to some external generic image-sharing site (that you're comfortable with) and give the link here with explicit permission for someone who is an established uploader to copy it into the wiki proper. A bit of fuss, but it's worked for me in the past (never having bothered to get an account, and mostly no desire to do so). 172.70.85.153 13:08, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
- Here it is! Could someone upload it, and is it possible to somehow be attributed to me? https://imgur.com/a/vEcHKez Rayna (talk) 05:37, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
I still think this explanation is janky, and buries the lede about how the comic accurately depicts exactly what it's describing (a perfectly normal bar graph, squished logarithmically in a way which does not line up with its axes). But I don't know how to fix this. 108.162.245.30 20:46, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
oh god is that an illusion or what o-o 172.68.34.17 17:00, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
