Talk:342: 1337: Part 2

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Well, imho the reference to the master in the mountain hideaway is clearly a reference to Kill Bill, but I am not skilled enough in English to write it myself... 217.162.253.103 13:06, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

Next time, don't be so shy! Just do the best you can and someone else can help correct it. Alpha (talk) 00:21, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why dijkstra's algorithm would use less memory than A*. Any ideas? 24.18.133.138 01:44, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Dijkstra's algorithm only needs to store one distance value per node, whereas A* needs at least an additional priority queue. Sometimes A* also precalculates and stores its heuristic. --Chtz (talk) 09:42, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
Why can not be A* implemented exactly as Dijkstra's is with additional penalty (the optimistic distance) calculated at every update? That way it would be as memory efficient as Dijkstra's.

162.158.202.118 23:48, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

A* needs a priority queue to store nodes to be searched and their heuristic estimates (starting from the initial node), and a chart to store searched nodes and their shortest-path values. In the worst case, every node in the graph is searched and put on the chart and the queue is empty (equivalent to Dijkstra's). In the best case, the chart contains only nodes on the shortest path, and the queue might be empty or contain unexpanded nodes, and there will likely be an implicit set of nodes never examined. It is hard to see how Dijkstra's can be more memory efficient than A*, except maybe at or near the worst case (due to the overhead of the additional data structures).

The mountain hideaway is a staple of Kung Fu movies. Kill Bill was effectively spoofing the genre, and so is this cartoon (rather than specifically spoofing Kill Bill). Mountain Hikes (talk) 04:17, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Just FYI, my high school math teacher was John Knuth, Donald Knuth's son. To prepare for the AP Calc exam in 2007, we went up to the Knuth family mountain hideaway (in Colorado) and studied for a weekend. This is a real place. Also, we all got 4's and 5's on the exam, best teacher I ever had! --User:GodFatherOfData 16:39, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Is that an ice pack he's holding in the first panel? 108.162.210.232 23:42, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

That's something I was wondering too. It's either an ice pack or a towel of some kind. Why would he need an ice pack / towel? Either he's sweating because he's nervous, it's an author mistake, or something offscreen happened. But... what could have happened? --JayRulesXKCD (talk) 11:49, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
He's holding the ice pack (or towel) because of how badly he got pwned. See the end of the last comic ("You may need to sit down").--Luke162.158.146.248 08:18, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

Anybody notice how her son is Bobby Roberts, or if we're going by the Exploits of a Mom comic, Robert Roberts? 108.162.246.122 20:27, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

I am very confused by "like a ring in a bell". That makes no sense. Pretty much obviously it should be "like ringing a bell" (enunciated in Chuck Berry's singing as "like-uh ringin' a bell") as in, ringing a bell is incredibly easy compared to playing guitar. Surely it's not just a mistake? Maybe it's a known Mondegreen and he put it in on purpose? AmbroseChapel (talk) 06:25, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

According to all lyric sites it is indeed "(a-)ringing" and I've found no reference to the alternative other than this page [[1]] referencing xkcd. However when I saw the cartoon I did imagine the quote might be correct, and make sense. You don't have to teach a bell to ring, ringing is an inherent quality of the bell, just as guitar or computer skills are suggested to be of the respective characters.

What is Elaine's first name? What is the significance of the fact that Elaine is her middle name? Mcm (talk) 16:49, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

According to 327:_Exploits_of_a_Mom, her "first" name is "Help I'm trapped in a driver's license factory". Mathmannix (talk) 19:31, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Should we be making a category regarding computer scientists and programmers with extensive knowledge of martial arts? Because it seems like a recurring gag. 172.69.35.27 10:21, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Is Bobby little bobby tables?[edit]

Hi, one question, is Robert Little Bobby Tables? that would fit to his mom?