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==Explanation==
 
==Explanation==
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[[Cueball]] is at [[:Category:Doctor Ponytail|Doctor Ponytail's]] office receiving examination or test results, but her statements are frustratingly generic, and entirely useless. She says that his "numbers" have revealed many "measurements" and "variables" but doesn't specify what they, or their values, are. The number of measurements observed is simply a product of how many have been taken, and not of Cueball's specific condition. In response to being asked whether that is bad, she ominously says that variables are the number one risk of "outcomes." This is unhelpful, since every outcome is the product of some set of variables. Additionally, outcomes can be good, bad, or neutral, so it does not address the question. Doctor Ponytail further states that the past is "a big contributor to" the future, a similarly uninformative statement, as Cueball implies by asking whether that is just {{w|causality}}. The doctor replies that causality is the leading cause of death, which is so [[703: Honor Societies|tautological]] as to be meaningless.
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{{incomplete|Created by EFFECTS THE SITUATION - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
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[[Cueball]] is at the hospital for some form of check-up. [[:Category:Doctor Ponytail|Doctor Ponytail]] comes in to inform him of the tests they have run, but her statements are frustratingly generic, and so lacking in diagnostic usefulness. She says that his health data has revealed some "measurements" and "variables" but doesn't specify what they are. Presumably, anyone who had had the panel of tests Cueball has been given would have had equally as many measurements and variables.
  
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Cueball tries to cut to the root of the issue by asking his chances of survival. Ponytail asks whether Cueball has a family history, but rather than asking for a history of specific illnesses, she is merely asking whether he has any family history at all. Her apparent concern on discovering that he does is presumably due to the fact that everyone who has a family history dies, and therefore she sees this as negative. However, this is not medically informative, since everyone has some kind of family history (whether they personally know anything of it or not) and everyone eventually dies.{{Citation needed}}
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In response to being asked whether this is bad, she ominously says that they are the number one cause of "outcomes." This is obvious, and therefore unhelpful, since every outcome is the product of some set of variables. Additionally, outcomes can be good, bad, or indifferent, so it does not address the question.
  
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The comic is likely a comment on the impenetrability of some medical diagnoses, where high levels of jargon and non-contextualized statistics, combined with a lot of hedging language, can leave patients none the wiser about their prospects or the relative merits of various courses of treatment. Similarly, it could be reflecting on the effects of {{w|availability bias}} and the {{w|base rate fallacy}} when medical practitioners are deriving diagnoses, treatment options, and similar conclusions from medical records designed to highlight the information necessary to diagnose specific well-understood illnesses. It may also be making fun of poorly defined health statistics: statistics for the [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/poisoning/poisoning.htm leading causes of accidental death in the United States], for example, typically cite 'poisoning' as the number one cause, even though poisoning other than drug overdoses is actually quite rare. The comic takes vague statistics to the extreme, citing 'causality' as the leading cause of death.  An alternate explanation is the comic is pointing out that the sicker a person is, the more tests are run. Ergo, a model for predicting death is the number of tests  or measurements.  
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Cueball tries to cut to the root of the issue by asking "what are my chances of survival?" Ponytail asks what is Cueball's family history, but rather than asking if his family has a history of similar symptoms to Cueball himself she is just asking if he has any family history whatsoever. Her apparent concern on discovering that he does is presumably due to the fact that everyone who has a family history dies, and therefore she sees this as a negative thing. However, this is not medically informative, since everyone has some kind of family history, and everyone eventually dies.
  
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The title text continues the joke, suggesting that researchers are searching for a cure for causality, which is absurd and inconceivable.
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The comic might be making fun of poorly defined health statistics: statistics for the [https://www.gwclaw.com/blog/accidental-death-causes/ leading causes of accidental death in the United States], for example, typically cite 'poisoning' as the number one cause, even though poisoning other than drug overdoses is actually quite rare. The comic takes vague statistics to the extreme, citing 'causality' as the leading cause of death.
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It may also be a comment on the impenetrability of some medical diagnoses, where high levels of jargon and non-contextualised statistics can leave patients none the wiser about their prospects, or the relative merits various courses of treatment.
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It may also be a joke about replacing the name of an effect with simply, "effect", thus being similar in a sense to a simple random generator, like [[2243: Star Wars Spoiler Generator]].
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The title text simply continues the joke, claiming that doctors are searching for a cure to 'causality'. This is obviously absurd and impossible, as it would destroy reality as we know it.
  
 
The comic as a whole is reminiscent of [[830: Genetic Analysis]] and [[1840: Genetic Testing Results]] (particularly the title text of the latter), as the information given by the doctor in all three is self-evident and useless as a result.
 
The comic as a whole is reminiscent of [[830: Genetic Analysis]] and [[1840: Genetic Testing Results]] (particularly the title text of the latter), as the information given by the doctor in all three is self-evident and useless as a result.
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[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
 
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
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[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
 
[[Category:Doctor Ponytail]]
 
[[Category:Doctor Ponytail]]
 
[[Category:Medicine]]
 
[[Category:Medicine]]

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