Editing 1781: Artifacts

{{comic
| number    = 1781
| date      = January 4, 2017
| title     = Artifacts
| image     = artifacts.png
| titletext = I didn't even realize you could HAVE a data set made up entirely of outliers.
}}

==Explanation==
The comic shows [[Cueball]] presenting data that was probably gathered in research. It's not clear what type of data it is, but one spike has been highlighted on the graph, despite this spike being apparently no larger than the noise in the data (and is much smaller than the central peak). Cueball seems to have made some kind of mistake in either the statistics or the measurement of the undefined subject of his research, thus his data results in many outliers. The word artifact is a wordplay with two meanings. It is either an {{w|Artifact_(archaeology)|archaeological artifact}} (such as the {{w|Holy Grail}} as in ''{{w|Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade}}'') or a fault in your experiment, where you (usually accidentally) influence the measurement with your equipment or unanticipated environmental factors. These are called {{w|Artifact_(error)|error artifacts}}.

{{w|Indiana Jones}} is (often humorously) [http://www.nbcnews.com/id/24595365/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/indiana-jones-would-make-bad-archaeologist/#.WG1XuflViig cited] as being a bad {{w|archaeologist}}. He often destroys the area he is looking for artifacts in, despite the context in which they were found being as or more important, archaeologically, than the artifacts themselves. He does not appear to make any records, carries the artifacts around without any thought for their ancient and fragile nature, and most often ends up losing the artifacts altogether.

An example of an error artifact is the measurement of the force between two charged metal spheres ({{w|Coulomb force}}), where the potential of unearthed nearby objects influences the measurement, thus causing an artifact. Artifacts have been mentioned before in xkcd, as in [[1453: fMRI]], where getting into the MRI machine induced unintended effects, such as thoughts of claustrophobia.

The title text refers to the entire data set being "outliers." In statistics, an outlier is an observation point that is distant from other observations. One way to have a data set composed entirely of outliers would be a data set with N points, in a 1/2 N-dimensional space, where each point is zero for every dimension except one, unique to itself. The 1/2 is because there would also be a -1 point.[http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1302395/n-points-can-be-equidistant-from-each-other-only-in-dimensions-ge-n-1] All these points are equidistant from each other. 

We could also infer that the accusation is a jab at the fact that the data points are all over the place; a good example of such chaotic data can be see in [[1725: Linear Regression]].

Randall is also applying one of his hobbies in this comic by using the word "data" in singular form. See [[1429: Data]]. This had already caused discussion in the [[Talk:1781: Artifacts|comments of this comic]] only a few hours after it came on-line.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is standing on a podium pointing at his presentation which includes a large line graph in the center part. There is plenty of text on the presentation, but none of it is readable. The central part of the line is raised high above the left and right part. The point where the line drops towards right is highlighted with a circle, with a double arrow above it pointing to a caption. There is also text next to the circle to the right.  Above the graph there are three smaller panels with drawings. There is one caption above these, and also one above the large graph. Below the graph there are two smaller panels with curves, each panel has it's own caption. Cueball addresses an unseen audience, and one from the audience interrupts him.]
:Cueball: The data clearly proves that-
:Offscreen voice: Are you Indiana Jones? 
:Offscreen voice: Because you've got a lot of artifacts there, and I'm pretty sure you didn't handle them right.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Public speaking]]
[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Scientific research]]