Difference between revisions of "1331: Frequency"
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Revision as of 22:28, 18 February 2014
Title text: This comic shows estimated average frequency. I wanted to include the pitch drop experiment, but it turns out the gif format has some issues with decade-long loops. Explanation
This comic shows a number of common events, arranged in a grid. Each of the events flashes with their average frequency. For example, statistically a child is born somewhere on the world approximately every 0.24 seconds, or four times per second. Therefore the tile "One birth" blinks about 4 times per second. The table below lists all the events and their duration / frequency. Some events make reference to other comics. The title text refers to the Pitch drop experiment which measures the flow of a piece of pitch over many years. At room temperature, tar pitch flows at a very slow rate, taking several years to form a single drop. The title text jokes that Randall tried to include a tile that flashes about once every ten years, but the tiles are all animated GIFs and the file format does not support animations that long.
Transcript
DiscussionI have began the transcript. Should a table be embedded with all the statements?108.162.250.11 07:33, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
<table> <tr> <th>Heartbeat</th> <th>One Birth</th> <th>One Death</th> <th>Someone Edits Wikipedia</th> <th>Someone Buys a Vibrator</th> </tr> <tr> <td>China Builds a Car</td> <td>Japan Builds a Car</td> <td>Germany Builds a Car</td> <td>The US Builds a Car</td> <td>Someone Else Builds a Car</td> </tr> <tr> <td>A European Union President Has Their First Kiss</td> <td>A US Fire Department Puts Out a Fire</td> <td>Someone Hits a Hole-In-One</td> <td>My Turn Signal Blinks</td> <td>The Turn Signal of the Car in Front of Me Blinks</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Earthquake (Magnitude 1)</td> <td>Earthquake (Magnitude 2)</td> <td>Earthquake (Magnitude 3)</td> <td>Earthquake (Magnitude 4)</td> <td>Member of the UK Parliament Flushes a Toilet</td> </tr> <tr> <td>An Airline Flight Takes Off</td> <td>Someone Buys <em>To Kill A Mockingbird</em></td> <td>Someone's Pet Cat Kills a Mockingbird</td> <td>Someone in Pheonix Buys New Shoes</td> <td>Someone in Pheonix Puts on a Condom</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Someone Locks Their Keys in Their Car</td> <td>A Sagittarius Named Amelia Drinks a Soda</td> <td>A Dog Bites Someone in the US</td> <td>Someone Steals a Bicycle</td> <td>A Bald Eagle Catches a Fish</td> </tr> <tr> <td>50,000 Plastic Bottles are Produced</td> <td>50,000 Plastic Bottles are Recycled</td> <td>A Bright Meteor is Visible Somewhere</td> <td>Old Faithful Erupts</td> <td>A fishing Boat Catches a Shark</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Someone in the US is Diagnosed With Cancer</td> <td>Someone in the US Dies from Cancer</td> <td>Someone Adopts a Dog from a Shelter</td> <td>Someone Adopts a Cat from a Shelter</td> <td>Someone gets Married</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Someone Registers a Domain</td> <td>Someone in the US Buys a House</td> <td>Someone in the US gets a Tattoo</td> <td>The Star <em>PSR J1748-2446AD Rotates 1,000 Times</em></td> <td>Someone Lies About their Age to Sign up for Facebook</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Someone Breaks an iPhone Screen</td> <td>A Little League Player Strikes Out</td> <td>Someone has Sex in North Dakota</td> <td>Justin Bieber Gains a Follower on Twitter</td> <td>Someone in Denver Orders a Pizza</td> </tr> </table>108.162.250.11 10:06, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
I would like to point out a few things: the title text refers to an experiment that shows a piece of tar, if I remember correctly, which looks like a solid material, dripping very very slowly. It takes a year or more for a drop to fall, and there should be a live stream of it somewhere, I think. The second is the turning signal being out of sync with the other car. Randall made a comic about that one already. It's a recurring thing.Dulcis (talk) 07:57, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
I found a simple tool that calculates the duration of GIF files on github: https://raw.github.com/alimony/gifduration/master/gifduration.py Slightly edited, this is the output: amelia.gif: 7790 ms (7.79 seconds) bieber.gif: 4730 ms (4.73 seconds) bike.gif: 24930 ms (24.93 seconds) birth.gif: 240 ms (0.24 seconds) book_mockingbird.gif: 42050 ms (42.05 seconds) bottles.gif: 1270 ms (1.27 seconds) car_china.gif: 1890 ms (1.89 seconds) car_elsewhere.gif: 1030 ms (1.03 seconds) car_germany.gif: 5800 ms (5.80 seconds) car_japan.gif: 4010 ms (4.01 seconds) car_us.gif: 6950 ms (6.95 seconds) cat.gif: 21300 ms (21.30 seconds) cat_mockingbird.gif: 1820 ms (1.82 seconds) death.gif: 560 ms (0.56 seconds) denverpizza.gif: 1270 ms (1.27 seconds) dogbite.gif: 7010 ms (7.01 seconds) dog.gif: 15600 ms (15.60 seconds) domain.gif: 640 ms (0.64 seconds) eagle.gif: 2690 ms (2.69 seconds) earthquake1.gif: 2430 ms (2.43 seconds) earthquake2.gif: 24260 ms (24.26 seconds) earthquake3.gif: 242600 ms (242.60 seconds) earthquake4.gif: 2426000 ms (2426.00 seconds) facebook.gif: 4320 ms (4.32 seconds) fire_dept.gif: 23000 ms (23.00 seconds) flight.gif: 930 ms (0.93 seconds) heartbeat.gif: 860 ms (0.86 seconds) holeinone.gif: 180000 ms (180.00 seconds) house.gif: 6220 ms (6.22 seconds) iphone.gif: 930 ms (0.93 seconds) keys.gif: 2430 ms (2.43 seconds) kiss.gif: 5530 ms (5.53 seconds) littleleague.gif: 1230 ms (1.23 seconds) meteor.gif: 1150 ms (1.15 seconds) ndsex.gif: 1380 ms (1.38 seconds) oldfaithful.gif: 5640000 ms (5640.00 seconds) parliament_toilet.gif: 10060 ms (10.06 seconds) phoenix.gif: 2050 ms (2.05 seconds) phoenixshoes.gif: 1080 ms (1.08 seconds) pulsar.gif: 1400 ms (1.40 seconds) recycled.gif: 4640 ms (4.64 seconds) shark.gif: 830 ms (0.83 seconds) tattoo.gif: 2060 ms (2.06 seconds) turnsignal1.gif: 940 ms (0.94 seconds) turnsignal2.gif: 900 ms (0.90 seconds) us_cancer_death.gif: 54340 ms (54.34 seconds) us_cancer.gif: 18990 ms (18.99 seconds) vibrator.gif: 2990 ms (2.99 seconds) wedding.gif: 750 ms (0.75 seconds) wikipedia.gif: 670 ms (0.67 seconds) This could be useful in creating some kind of table in the Explanation. 108.162.231.109 09:25, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
Suggestion: grid like coordinates to refer to other flashing text? (think E4, B6, D5, ...) sirKitKat 173.245.53.173 11:19, 17 February 2014 (UTC) Someone from the UK parliment flushed the toilet while someone in Phoenix used a condom, while a bald eagle caught a fish... (I know, it's just the frequency, not the exact time it is shown to occur) 141.101.98.131 11:28, 17 February 2014 (UTC) Shouldn't the North Dakota one have been "two people"? Djbrasier (talk) 11:57, 17 February 2014 (UTC) He should have added a PNG saying "your screen's refresh rate"... --Kronf (talk) 12:06, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
Technically you can create an animated GIF that will repeat every 10 years. The standard says that maximum interval between frames is 65535*0.01 seconds, so to create a 10-year video you'll need 31557600*10/655.35=481538 frames. Since GIF registers only changes pixels for each frame, most of these frames will be empty (I'm not sure about the size, but around 20 bytes), so the whole file would be around 9.6 megabytes. Please include this in the explanation (possibly correcting numbers). --Zverik (talk) 13:18, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
Update: Randall used some Adobe software to create highly redundant animated GIFs (with a color profile written to every frame). The thing is, frames are not equal, they gradually change brightness, so each frame is written anew and takes 3670 bytes (measured with oldfaithful.gif). So the estimate for 10-year animated GIF with that software would be 1.77 gigabytes (1.65 GiB). That would be too much indeed. --Zverik (talk) 13:51, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
Anybody understand why there are so many references to Phoenix ? Spongebog (talk) 20:31, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
To 108.162.245.114 who said that all members of the UK parliament flush a toilet 3,136,938 times per year, please read False precision. 173.245.50.84 22:10, 17 February 2014 (UTC) This should work for the heading, but it's a complete mess and messes up the entire layout. Could someone have a look at this monstrosity: <table class cellspacing="5" style="background-color: #FFFFFF; border: 1px solid #AAAAAA; color: black; font-size: 88%; line-height: 1.5em; margin: 0.5em 0 0.5em 1em; padding: 0.2em; text-align: center; width:98%; {{{bodystyle|}}}"><!-- ### Navigation bar (previous, next...) ### --><tr><td><!-- --><ul style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 10px;" class="no-link-underline"><!-- ### If there is an article for the comic prior to this one, create a "prev" ### -->{{#ifexist:{{#expr:1331 - 1}}<!-- -->|<li style="background-color: #6E7B91; border: 1.5px solid #333333; border-radius: 3px 3px 3px 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 5px 0 gray; display: inline; font-size: 16px; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: 600; margin: 0 4px; padding: 1.5px 0;"><!-- -->[[{{#expr:1331 - 1}}|<span style="color: #FFFFFF; padding: 0 12px;">< Prev</span>]]<!-- --></li><!-- -->|<li style="display: inline; font-size: 16px; margin: 0 4px; padding: 1.5px 12px;"><!-- --> <!-- --></li><!-- -->}}<!-- ### Create a centre button with comic number, date (if exists) and link ### --><li style="background-color: #6E7B91; border: 1.5px solid #333333; border-radius: 3px 3px 3px 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 5px 0 gray; display: inline; font-size: 16px; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: 600; margin: 0 4px; padding: 1.5px 0;" class="plainlinks"><!-- -->[http://www.xkcd.com/1331/ <!-- --><span style="color: #FFFFFF; padding: 0 12px;">Comic #1331 (February 17, 2014)</span>]<!-- --></li><!-- ### If there is an article for the comic following this one, create a "next" ### -->{{#ifexist:{{#expr:1331 + 1}}<!-- -->|<li style="background-color: #6E7B91; border: 1.5px solid #333333; border-radius: 3px 3px 3px 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 5px 0 gray; display: inline; font-size: 16px; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: 600; margin: 0 4px; padding: 1.5px 0;"><!-- -->[[{{#expr:1331 + 1}}|<span style="color: #FFFFFF; padding: 0 12px;">Next ></span>]]<!-- --></li><!-- -->|<li style="display: inline; font-size: 16px; margin: 0 4px; padding: 1.5px 12px;"><!-- --> <!-- --></li><!-- --><!-- --></ul><!-- --></td></tr><!-- ### Comic title ### --><tr><td style="font-size: 20px; padding-bottom:10px"><!-- -->Frequency<!-- --></td></tr>}}<!-- ### Comic image and title text ### --><tr><td><!-- --><center><table><tr> <td>[[File:heartbeat.gif]]</td> <td>[[File:birth.gif]]</td> <td>[[File:death.gif]]</td> <td>[[File:wikipedia.gif]]</td> <td>[[File:vibrator.gif]]</td> </tr><tr> <td>[[ File:car china.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:car japan.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:car germany.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:car us.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:car elsewhere.gif ]]</td> </tr><tr> <td>[[ File:kiss.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:fire dept.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:holeinone.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:turnsignal1.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:turnsignal2.gif ]]</td> </tr><tr> <td>[[ File:earthquake1.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:earthquake2.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:earthquake3.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:earthquake4.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:parliament toilet.gif ]]</td> </tr><tr> <td>[[ File:flight.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:book mockingbird.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:cat mockingbird.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:phoenixshoes.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:phoenix.gif ]]</td> </tr><tr> <td>[[ File:keys.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:amelia.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:dogbite.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:bike.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:eagle.gif ]]</td> </tr><tr> <td>[[ File:bottles.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:recycled.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:meteor.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:oldfaithful.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:shark.gif ]]</td> </tr><tr> <td>[[ File:us cancer.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:us cancer death.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:dog.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:cat.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:wedding.gif ]]</td> </tr><tr> <td>[[ File:domain.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:house.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:tattoo.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:pulsar.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:facebook.gif ]]</td> </tr><tr> <td>[[ File:iphone.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:littleleague.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:ndsex.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:bieber.gif ]]</td> <td>[[ File:denverpizza.gif ]]</td> </tr></table><!-- --><br /><span style="{{{captionstyle|}}}"><span style="color:grey">Title text:</span> This comic shows estimated average frequency. I wanted to include the pitch drop experiment, but it turns out the gif format has some issues with decade-long loops.</span></td></tr></table></center>173.245.53.184 22:31, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
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Also, these GIFs seem to be pretty inefficiently compressed; I'm following another webcomic at the moment where most of the frames are high-resolution full-colour aniGIFs, and each one tends to clock in around 40 to 100kb unless there's a lot of action in it... but the "magnitude 1 earthquake" one here is 123kb. Even so, the mag 4 quake GIF - 1000x longer - is but 280kb, so the size obviously doesn't scale linearly with length. The difference is most likely in levels of grey shown during the fade, and as even the 42-second "to kill a mockingbird" one is noticeably slower fading than the more frequent ones around it (not quite enough, at 30fps and maybe 3-4 seconds of fading, to cover the whole 166 shades between lightest and darkest text - but the mag 4 one would easily manage it even at a lower framerate, as it probably takes a good 30 seconds if not a couple minutes). It's possible that 300kb is all it takes for the actual image payload even of a full-fade panel with a lot of high frequency, non repeating patterned text, and all the rest is just padding / blank / repeat overheads. Which means even our 0.27-bit-per-second tortoise would get all THAT sent in a little over three months, not much more time than would be needed to show the likely fadeout in realtime if it was the first thing that actually appeared. If it was sent by any other realistic communication method, even as POST data from the client end of a 1200/75 baud modem, it'd have entirely ample time to buffer (the first frame would likely appear within 1 to 5 minutes), and your more realistic concern would be not only stopping your computer from rebooting before the GIF had time to run through a cycle, but keeping it running continuously for that length of time (and, if needed, downloading the file really slowly throughout) in any case. 141.101.98.150 19:08, 29 September 2014 (UTC) Anyone notice how the explanations for the car-related frequencies are nonsensical? They're so nonsensical that I can't tell how to fix them without actually knowing the subject. Please fix.108.162.219.206 05:20, 3 October 2014 (UTC) I'm filling in the remaining fields the best I can. I did the last one; Denver pizza. Math is not my strong point. It's probably a joke statistic, but someone may want to double-check my math. I didn't see any figures for Denver's pizza consumption, but I figured it was one of those things where it just maybe worked out to match the Denver population. -- 4jonah (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
"About half of all cyclists have their bikes stolen, oftentimes more than once, but riders have a 90% chance of theft, all according to this report." It's a very confusing sentence and doesn't match the data in the linked report. About half of all people who ever cycle get their bikes stolen at some point. People who cycle every day are 90% more likely to have their bike stolen than people who cycle infrequently. Not 90% chance of theft. I will update this if nobody objects. AmbroseChapel (talk) 23:47, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
Not sure if it's the sort of interesting fact that should be added or not, but under the "Sagittarius named Amelia" section, that link to the Baby Name Wizard shows the peak popularity for the name "Amelia" was in 2012. The character of Amelia Pond was on Doctor Who from 2010 to mid-2012, and that was also the height of the immense popularity in America of Matt Smith playing the title role. Might be the source of the popularity of that name. Also, does the previous analysis take into account the fact that Sagittarius named Amelia wouldn't start drinking soda until they are at least a few years old? Would taking out all the ones under the age of five or six let us bring back in SNA in the rest of the world, given that soda is much more popular in America than elsewhere? CritterKeeper (talk) 19:00, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
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