Talk:1374: Urn

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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The urn could contain both the ashes and the balls, as the teacher does not use any modifiers like "only". IE: Meg could have imagined these balls being added to an urn are already has knowledge of. It would be nice if the explanation clarified this possibility. 199.27.128.68 10:10, 28 May 2014 (UTC) Adam

I interpreted the "with replacement" part of the title text as Megan wanting to have her grandfather back.--Buggz (talk) 08:31, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

I now realize she just wants to put the ashes back, it's so obvious it hurts. #overthinkingit --Buggz (talk) 09:44, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

The calculation for "with replacement" is substantially shorter (and thus easier and less tedious) than without. 108.162.237.218 09:14, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Depends on whether you disregard the order in which the balls are drawn or not. -- Xorg (talk) 10:09, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

A bot wrote all of these?!--108.162.215.46 09:50, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

I guess I'll have to remove "understanding xkcd" from my list of working Turing tests then... -- Xorg (talk) 10:09, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Maybe I'm off base, but it seems to be a commentary on Trigger Warnings 108.162.219.14 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Could be. I can see that, with the standard science/math/Randall twist. Only in this case, the content is totally unexpected based on the perceived topic that is to be covered. Unlike possibly expecting racism from a civil war era novel, brutality from an ancient Greek historical account; or peanuts in a can of, peanuts... Jarod997 (talk) 13:23, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
I'm going throwing in my vote here - I'm well aware of the concept of "trigger warnings," but I don't think this is a reference to them. Is there any actual evidence of this? This seems like a particularly editorial comment, that isn't really backed up by the content of the comic. --Overand (talk) 18:02, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
I really don't see it --H (talk) 22:44, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

I'd suggest that Megan could identify her grandfathers ashes by the urn (shape, colour, identification), but there's no clear indication of that in the panel. She clearly recognizes the ashes as her grandfathers after she sticks her hand in. Jarod997 (talk) 13:25, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

I think the key here is that for some people the word "urn" is a neutral word, while for other people "urn" is only associated with funerals and cremation and the ashes of a loved one. The fact that the title for the drawing is "Urn" could also imply that it is all about the word "urn" and how some people react emotionally to it. --RenniePet (talk) 13:49, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

It seems very clear to me that this comic is mostly about "trigger warnings". J Milstein (talk) 13:55, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Reading the title I firstly thought it would have had a "uniform resource name" joke in... 108.162.219.31 16:48, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

I find trigger warnings to be ridiculous (thanks in no small part to Tumblr) and unnecessary (why not just call them plain warnings? jeez), but I think the "trigger warning" explanation is really reaching, honestly. I don't find any indications in Randall's comic to suggest this. I think Megan is just trying to play a cruel, cruel prank on Cueball. It's a funny one at that. No need to over-analyze it, IMO.

Oh, and to the user above Jarod997... thanks a lot for linking that NYT article. Now I have a headache from reading that... Ugh! 108.162.219.42 18:08, 28 May 2014 (UTC)Mudkip3DS

It may also be related to the recent Django drama about terminology: https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692 --173.245.53.78 18:42, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

My first thought about "drawing with replacement" was that actual remains were replaced with squirrel, as in recent what-if) 141.101.80.202 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

This what if ;-) Kynde (talk) 04:43, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

I think the joke is that Cueball was just trying to explain a mathematical concept through imagery, but Megan took it as a deep visualization exercise and let her vivid imagination guide her experience (i.e., "Imagine yourself under a shady tree by a riverbank, perfectly at peace. You notice a person walking toward you. It's the person you want most to see. Who is the person?"). He was about to tell her what would happen next; he didn't mean for her to supply the rest of the experience. --민석 (talk) 23:53, 28 May 2014 (UTC)