Talk:2295: Garbage Math

This is not a Covid19 comic. One could think that this is a comment on the difficulties of modeling the corona virus outbreak, but since discussions of exponential functions are only a small part in the comic I believe it is just a general comment on floating point arithmetic mixed in with statistical considerations. --108.162.229.242 17:28, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

I disagree that this is not a COVID-19 comic. I also believe the one about visualizing large numbers was COVID-19 related. On the other hand, I like the idea that Randall might produce exactly 19 comics related to SARS CoViD 2019, so I'm prepared to concede the point for the sake of arbitrary numerological appeal.

ProphetZarquon (talk) 18:42, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

I think Exa-Exabyte was a real stretch (the virus doesn't even have DNA), but there is a tenuous link so whatever. The idea that this comic is related, on the other hand, stretches past the breaking point. There's hardly anything that can't be linked to global events if we try hard enough, but that doesn't mean there's an actual link. Sometimes a comic about garbage math is just a comic about garbage math.

Well this is surprising came here thinking I understood it just to see what the discussion looked like. Ended up learning something new. I was able to understand intuitively the comic. But this is my first exposure to actually doing math on the error bars. I think I was supposed to do that in college but I don't remember anyone ever explaining how it should work. --162.158.63.208 18:14, 17 April 2020 (UTC)