2122: Size Venn Diagram
| Size Venn Diagram |
 Title text: Terms I'm going to start using: The Large Dipper, great potatoes, the Big Hadron Collider, and Large Orphan Annie. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a Large Terror. 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. |
This comic is a Venn diagram illustrating the complete set of possible intersections of five different size descriptors: "little, "large", "small", and "great", “big”. Each unique intersection contains a short list of terms that can be preceded by each applicable descriptor. For example, "flying fox" (a type of bat) appears at the intersection of "large", "small", and "great", because the species large flying fox, small flying fox, and great flying fox all exist, but there is no such species as a "big flying fox" or a "little flying fox". Small intestine and large intestine both exist, not the rest.
Some descriptors are applied in pairs; for example, "planet" is placed to be in both the "little" and "big" groups, a reference to the video game Little Big Planet.
The title text has Randall suggesting he will start using term combinations that don't appear in the above diagram.
Transcript
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This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks. |
The comic is a five-variable venn diagram, with some words that fit with those prefixes.
- Big: Bang Theory, Enchilada, Board, Sur
- Little: Orphan Annie, House on the Prairie, Richard
- Large: format, Millimeter Telescope, Hadron Collider
- Small: claims court, potatoes
- Great: Barrier Reef, Wall of China, Depression, Terror, aunt
- Big/Great: Bend, Bear Lake
- Big/Small: time, screen
- Big/Little: Dipper/Dipper, Planet, Lies/lie, sister/sister
- Little/Great: Blue Heron
- Little/Large: Professor/Professor, Forest Bat
- Big/Large: Toothed Aspen
- Large/Small: intestine, Magellanic Cloud
- Little/Small: wonder, soldiers
- Small/Great: pox, cardiac vein
- Large/Great: Billed Seed Finch
- Big/Large/Great: hearted
- Big/Small/Great: end
- Big/Little/Small: foot
- Big/Little/Great: league
- Little/Large/Great: (none)
- Big/Little/Large: foundation
- Big/Large/Small: Eyed Conger, Blue
- Little/Large/Small: emerald
- Little/Small/Great: circle, room
- Large/Small/Great: flying fox
- Big/Large/Small/Great: game, white
- Big/Little/Small/Great : world, one
- Little/Big/Large/Great: (none)
- Little/Big/Large/Small: (none)
- Little/Big/Great/Small: (none)
- Little/Large/Great/Small: (none)
- Little/Big/Large/Great/Small: Island
List of Items in the Diagram
| Item | Big | Great | Large | Little | Small |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue | Nickname for IBM and the New York Giants, also a movie | butterfly | butterfly | ||
| Eyed Conger | eel | eel | eel | ||
| Forest Bat | bat | bat | |||
| Format | anything larger than 4x5 inches in photography | ||||
| Hadron Collider | particle accelerator | ||||
| House on the Prairie | novel (and TV) | ||||
| Intestine | gut | gut | |||
| Island | largest island in Hawaii | in Cork Harbour, Ireland | island in the Antilles, owned by Grenada | several islands named such, plus a song in Randy Newman's Faust | novel which was made into a movie |
| Magellanic Cloud | galaxy | galaxy | |||
| Millimeter Telescope | radiotelescope | ||||
| Orphan Annie | comic strip | ||||
| Pox | syphilis | disease | |||
| Professor | rap artist | calculator (also Asperger's) | |||
| Richard | musician | ||||
| Screen | movies | TV | |||
| Time | major | minor | |||
| Toothed Aspen | tree (bigtooth) | tree | |||
| White | ski resort | shark | pig | butterfly |
add a comment! ⋅ add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅ 
refresh comments!Discussion
The word league is in a diamond-shaped region, which probably connotes to the baseball diamond.
I think Randall kind of missed an opportunity with the title text: he should have used the new terms as a way to fill the blank areas in the diagram, for instance 'Great Emerald' for the currently empty set Great+Small+Little+Large.141.101.99.221 14:31, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
- No, I think the diagram itself is meant to be completely correct. But I didn't check all 100+ combinations. Fabian42 (talk) 14:57, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
- Yes, I believe the diagram is correct now, but as per the title text Randall will start using new combinations of terms, probably to get their usage mainstream and move the location of the words in the diagram. I'm saying he should have created terms that would fill some blank areas. For instance, his Large Dipper would make Dipper appear in the Big+Little+Large area where we already have League.141.101.99.95 15:16, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
- I understood what you said (the first time around) and agree. Randall's title text is to acknowledge or engage the patterns he's discovered in the comic (as usual), and he could do that more thoroughly by making up words that would make the chart more balanced. 162.158.78.100 16:27, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
- I think his choices are an attempt to complete the table: Large Orphan Annie fills in the triangle-ish at one o'clock, Large Dipper fills in the rectangle-ish area at one o'clock, though he seems to have failed to fill in the rectangle-ish area at six-o'clock 162.158.62.63 19:45, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
- I understood what you said (the first time around) and agree. Randall's title text is to acknowledge or engage the patterns he's discovered in the comic (as usual), and he could do that more thoroughly by making up words that would make the chart more balanced. 162.158.78.100 16:27, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
- Yes, I believe the diagram is correct now, but as per the title text Randall will start using new combinations of terms, probably to get their usage mainstream and move the location of the words in the diagram. I'm saying he should have created terms that would fill some blank areas. For instance, his Large Dipper would make Dipper appear in the Big+Little+Large area where we already have League.141.101.99.95 15:16, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
- He could also have placed “man” between “little” and “big” just to reference the movie ☺
Any such diagram will inevitably have small lacunae. But "Friendly Giant" is a particularly large one. 162.158.63.172 15:21, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
Endian? Scott? Tits?108.162.219.112 15:23, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
- Yeah, what about Little Endian? It's missing! 172.68.143.156 19:28, 11 March 2019 (UT
- "Endian" would go in the "Big/Little" area, which already has "Dipper", "Lies", "Planet" and "Sister"; no room...
Besides the transcript of what's in each category, what about a table to explain why the items categorized as they are, like:
| Item | Big | Great | Large | Little | Small |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Island | Hawaii | Cork Harbor, Ireland | Antilles | movie | novel, movie |
| Pox | n/a | syphilis | n/a | n/a | disease |
| White | BC ski resort | shark | pig | n/a | butterfly |
{Unsigned|172.69.62.160}
I don't know why, but the shape of this diagram feels really satisfying to me. Hawthorn (talk) 16:29, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
- For me it’s just hard to look at. Netherin5 (talk) 16:41, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
- Came here to say exactly that. The symmetry is really pleasing. I've been considering how effective adding colours would be as well. Cosmogoblin (talk) 17:55, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
- I beg to differ. xkcd finally went pear-shaped. (runs for his life) 162.158.89.223 11:44, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
- It looks like these style Venn diagrams are generated by http://bioinformatics.psb.ugent.be/webtools/Venn/ ... haven't tried it myself. Don't know if they invented it or took it from elsewhere. 162.158.79.149 21:17, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
- This particular geometric configuration for five category Venn diagrams was popularized by Adrian Dusa's venn package for R. 172.68.142.179 17:55, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
- I would expect color to help a lot. I'm somewhere in between Netherin and Hawthorn's opinion. There is definite elegance to the shapes and their interaction, but trying to figure out which three pears overlap a word box can go crosseyed really fast.172.69.46.58 17:20, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
- Could it be because they look like eggplants? Kind of like the eggplant emojis? -boB (talk) 15:45, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Again I wonder if he does these sorts of comics just to see how far we'll take it Cgrimes85 (talk) 16:51, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
Uhhh...isn’t the bottom part just the transcript?Netherin5 (talk) 17:08, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
Shouldn't this go in the Venn Diagram category? 172.68.132.95 00:10, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
- Done. --172.68.182.154 17:58, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Can anyone make the table's cells be more regular in size across columns? 172.68.132.95 00:54, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
- Done 141.101.104.35 15:28, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
I am disappointed that he only referenced the "little big planet" game but not the "little big adventure" one. 141.101.96.187 08:04, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
- Perhaps because Little Big Adventure has been released as "Relentless: Twinsen's Adventures" in North America (and some other regions)? Even if Randall knows the game, he might know it by the alternate title. - kosgd 188.114.103.206 11:03, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
Large Frog is an artwork, apparently. --162.158.155.200 22:56, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
Why Are we so sure that planet being in both the little and big categories is a reference to the game? V (talk) 01:23, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
- It's a good point; I can find plausible Wikipedia entries for Little planet and Big Planet but not for any of the others. Hawthorn (talk) 14:22, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
- It’s more likely a very popular video game that seems a lot like Randall’s taste than a photography thing. It should at least be included. If anyone wants to put in the link for both I’m okay with that. Netherin5 (talk) 14:27, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
Big Blue is also a thing in F-Zero. 162.158.126.126 15:15, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
You could fill the empty great/large/small field with: man. And the empty great/large/little with lady 162.158.91.59 12:06, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
I had a great time looking over the diagram, but through this I discovered that it's not correct ;) --Lordyoyo (talk) 14:25, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
Enchilada
Is there a reason why "enchilada" appears in two rows in the table? One is capitalized, the other is not; both have similar "big" descriptions. These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For (talk) 05:26, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
- Sorry, I added the second one in the correct alphabetical location, but didn't see the first one. I've removed the first one and transferred the Wiktionary link to the second version. KieferSkunk (talk) 01:33, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
I think that Randall placed "Wonder" in the wrong location. The term "Great Wonder" is used by the Civilization franchise. there ia s 1996 book titled "The Great Wonder" and two songs with the same title, one by Dagoba and one by Ryan Taubert. I've never played Civilization, nor read the book and don't think that I've hear either of the two songs.108.162.210.154 22:28, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
