2466: In Your Classroom
| In Your Classroom |
 Title text: Ontology is way off to the left and geography is way off to the right. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a ONTOLOGICAL MANTLE. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks. |
Randall has created a chart about school courses, comparing how normal an example of the topic itself would be if it appeared in the classroom, and how dangerous it would be if said example appeared in the classroom.
| Course Topic | Weirdness | Danger | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atmospheric Physics | 0% | 0% | The presence of atmosphere in the classroom is quite common, as humans require the presence of an atmosphere to remain alive, and cannot learn while dead.[citation needed] |
| Ethics | |||
| Education | |||
| Bibliography | |||
| Human Physiology | |||
| Public Speaking | |||
| Architecture | |||
| Library Scince | |||
| Furniture Design | |||
| Culinary Arts | |||
| Ergonomics | |||
| Botany | |||
| 20th Century Authors | |||
| Exobiology | |||
| 21st Century Authors | |||
| 18th Century Authors | |||
| Paleontology | |||
| Robotics | |||
| Martian Soil Chemistry | |||
| Tourism | |||
| Child Psychology | |||
| Entomology | |||
| Occupational Therapy | |||
| Hydraulic Engineering | |||
| Pest Control | |||
| Foodborne Illness | |||
| Criminal Law | |||
| Physiology of Stress | |||
| Oncology | |||
| Ornithology | |||
| Animation | |||
| Petroleum Geology | |||
| Highway Engineering | |||
| Toxicology | |||
| Hematology | |||
| Hostage Negotiation | |||
| History of Siege Warfare | |||
| Trauma Surgery | |||
| Vulcanology | |||
| Quasar Astronomy | |||
| Ontology (Title Text) | <0% | ? | |
| Geography (Title Text) | >100% | ? |
| Weirdness | Goodness | Subject | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Atmospheric Physics | |||
| Ethics | |||
| Bibliography | |||
| 20th century authors | |||
| 21st century authors | |||
| Exobiology | |||
| Education | |||
| Public Speaking | |||
| 19th century authors | |||
| Human Physiology | |||
| Architecture | |||
| Library Science | |||
| Robotics | |||
| Paleontology |
Transcript
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This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks. |
add a comment! ⋅ add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ 
refresh comments!Discussion
yay! another one where a table is useful for an explanation! also first ALPHALUL 162.158.79.59 01:01, 22 May 2021 (UTC)Bumpf
Exobiology should not be in the Good area. I've seen those movies, I know what happens next. Andyd273 (talk) 02:18, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
I'm sort of sad that the the hover text, or perhaps the origin, wasn't simply "Tautology" 108.162.237.74 21:01, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
I think that the scales would be better shown as +/- from a (0,0) point than %'s from the top left. At least for the Good/Bad axis It's really weird to say that "Education" has 10% danger because it's not quite as good as having an atmosphere. Is it just me? --Bobson (talk) 01:51, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
- Many students consider education - especially tests - dangerous. -- Hkmaly (talk) 02:26, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
- No, I agree as well. Would it be out of line if I changed it? 162.158.75.18 17:26, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
Not sure how big is smallest quasar, but I suspect one appearing in class would be bad even for Sun and rest of solar system. -- Hkmaly (talk) 02:29, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
- I agree. This should be sooooo far below the bad axis (or Volcanoes) that it should only have been mentioned in the title text. Of course Quasars do not exist in this age... But if one suddenly began in your class room it would be the end of the local spiral arm of the galaxy, and would devour most of what was there forming a new black hole center of the galaxy (a double black hole center). It would of course end all of Earth history as well as the solar system and the local cluster of stars. So putting it right under volcanoes, which would only destroy the local city (it was not given it was a super volcano), compared to ending Earths existence is not really serious. And as explained in the explanation he has previously also mentioned off chart points in the title text, as he does also for less interesting subjects in this one as well. --Kynde (talk) 19:06, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
Is vertical axis how dangerous? I read it as either being positive utility (Societal good and bad) or how much Randall likes it? Kev (talk) 10:19, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
Shouldn't it be vulcanology?Joem5636 (talk) 12:33, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
- I thought that, but it appears that vulcanology/volcanology are both possibly equally valid (though the 'vulc' definitions point to 'volc' ones almost always in online dictionaries, with the reverse mostly only as 'alternative', and 'vulcanologist' seems less acknowledged than 'volcanologist' in related-words linking). In many ways, that annoys me, but that might be the classicist in me rather than the geographer/geologist who appreciates that "vulcanology" might be a rather more limited field that would require no more travel to extensively study than can be afforded by a handy Sicilian fishing boat or light aircraft. 141.101.99.19 14:48, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
Would an alternate Geography = weird be due to an invading nation-state? We already have volcanology and other similar "The earth came into the classroom" things in the graph. OhFFS (talk) 21:42, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
- That would be bad, but still less weird than the actual Earth. 172.70.114.48 18:09, 26 May 2021 (UTC)
TL;DR: Too many "citation needed" tags! It's not funny if you use it too much.
Several parts of this explanation seem to have been written in such a way as to include statements against which nobody in their right mind would argue and, in any other context at least, would not require any supporting citation, and are hence appropriate places for the humourous use of "citation needed" often seen on this site.[citation needed] I very much appreciate the hitherto typical Explain-XKCD-style sparse (about once per article) use of "citation needed" but I feel that it loses much of it's comedic effect when used frequently (six times in this article as I write!) in text that appears to be composed with the purpose of including the tag several times. I appreciate that some of us enjoy reading explanations peppered with the tags, so I haven't removed any of them, but my feeling is that the 'too much of a good thing' concept applies here. In future articles I personally hope to see normally written explanations (or as normally written as we can reasonably expect given the subject matter) with "citation needed" tags used only sparingly.
Missed opportunity: "...and Quantum Mechanics is both way off to the left and way off to the right." --172.69.35.102 22:25, 1 June 2021 (UTC)
I tried to edit the table to have the weirdness and badness from -10 to 10, but the table broke. Can someone fix it please? Cal3000000 (talk) 12:12, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
- Fixed it here (before I read your call for help). I mention in the summary the reason it broke, and was just about to let you know anyway (you don't have a Talk page yet, so came here to give the link and then find the above plea).
- (I had to squash the reason down, to fit, however. Table-data lines get the "|-" symbol at the start of a line (text after that doesn't appear as regular cell data). Table cell-data starts as "|" on a line-start (or "||" where adding more cells on a single line of markup) and when the cell ("|") starts with a "-" (e.g. "-5") then it clearly looks like a row-break ("|-[...]") unless you do something about it. In this case, I put a space between the cell-pipe and the value-negative (and also could have added one, or two, before the unsigned values ...just for markup neatness). Other solutions might have been to use a different dash (”–” instead of "-", visually not too different, but might have annoyed other people doing text-searches [edit: and caused more fuss in supporting table-sorting functionality, of course!]), moved the new-line cells into being "||" followups to the respective prior line or used something like a
<nowiki/>"breaking-nonspace" interjection (i.e. technically the opposite of an , though that would have worked also for several reasons). I'm sure there are other ways of doing it, as well, but I only tried the first, with the others in mind in case I'd got the right sort of diagnosis in mind but hadn't immediately identified a working cure.) - The only suggestion I have, for future, is to use the Preview button more. As I ought to, sometimes. But it lets you play around to see if you can identify (and solve!) any problems, especially with notoriously miseditable table markup. You can also entirely back out of changes easier, while you try to learn what went wrong or seek help from others. It's always good to learn, of course! And I also learnt from this, and it's probably only circumstantial that I had never made the same inadvertent error in the past... ;) 172.69.194.80 13:57, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
Thanks to whoever added to my clarification on top of the table Moderator (talk) 01:50, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
- hey, uh, i think a joke in here needs an explain-explain-xkcd page.
the thing in robotics' row about sarah connor from terminator. self-explanatory. -- Willlbrwillbr (talk) 01:31, 13 February 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- I'll put a wikilink in, then. Perhaps her Character Page, if she has one and it relates to her (justified) robophobia. 172.69.195.230 02:08, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
