602: Overstimulated

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 11:19, 22 February 2013 by 217.121.135.190 (talk) (Fix typo.)
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Overstimulated
My favorite thing to do at parties is to talk judgementally about people who aren't there.
Title text: My favorite thing to do at parties is to talk judgementally about people who aren't there.

Explanation

After being cooped up working on papers, Cueball goes to a party, only to find himself tuning out the chatter of his friends in order to work on math problems in his head. He writes down the prime numbers on cards, and then stretches them out such that the area of the card is the same (say, 1), but one of the sides has been elongated to a length equal to the number on the card. This reduces the length on the other dimension to the reciprocal of the number on the card (i.e. 1/n, with n being the number on the card), according to the area formula for rectangles.

Stacking these reciprocals all up will eventually diverge, meaning the sum will be infinite without ever leveling off. This is unimaginatively referred to as the divergence of the sum of the reciprocals of the primes, and was proven by Euler in 1737.

This may be an Asperger's refererence. The Cambridge Apergers Test includes questions on preferences for, and ability to cope with, social situations. It also asks the person taking the test if they have an affinity for numbers and do they see patterns in every day objects. Cueball would score high on the Asperger's scale.

Transcript

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Discussion

The explanation needs to mention the irony of Man 3's line in the last panel. 108.162.216.45 12:39, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

The Onion actually ran an article on March 19th 2014 titled "Report: Strongest Human Relationships Emerge From Bashing Friend Who Couldn't Make It Out." 108.162.220.23 21:47, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm surprised that there hasn't been a discussion here about the use of the name "Elaine". The protagonist of the "1337" series of comics is named Elaine. Should that possible connection be stated in this article, or in the article for Elaine herself? Ijpete98 (talk) 23:14, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Shouldn't the explanation say something about the sarcasm in the title text? 172.70.91.128 20:29, 19 August 2022 (UTC)