Talk:1529: Bracket

I would have added Amanda Plummer. Will confuse Plummer with Palmer any day. 108.162.249.191 23:19, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Interesting to me that no one has noted the order of the doctors. Doctor Octopus is from a comic, Doctor Manhattan is from a graphic novel and, trying to avoid spoilers here, the atomic bomb plays a key role in the story. The atomic bomb was the product of the Manhattan project (a fact not lost on Alan Moore), and the subject of the movie referenced by the next line, Dr Strangelove ("or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb"). I can't believe this order is arbitrary. 173.245.48.108 04:55, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

What's the connection between Rip Torn and Natalie Imbruglia? 108.162.238.183 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Answer: Her song, Torn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV1XWJN3nJo- -- Stumpy (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Rip Torn could have a preliminary match with Prof. Lance Rips Template:16:34, 25 May 2015 (UTC)Mitch Marks uchicago

Any pairings that you'd add, given the opportunity? Personally I always confuse Wilson Pickett and Wilson Phillips. Studley (talk) 08:28, 25 May 2015 (UTC) Will Ferrell and Pharrell Williams for me! - -- Stumpy (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

How about George Washington and George Washington Carver? and the George Washington Bridge?

At one time, the White House had both a Donald Regan and a Ronald Reagan.108.162.215.190 17:14, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Why do some first round pairings have more than two people? Beyoncé starts at the third round, so it can't be just because of the number of people. There has to be a joke in them but I don't see it. --141.101.104.176 08:45, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Possibly an in-joke at the NCAA bracket's First Four round. Mister/Fred Astaire/Rogers is a more "traditional" reference to the First Four. 108.162.219.103 10:32, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps it's worth adding to a trivia section that (assuming every person/thing has an equal chance of winning every matchup, Beyonce has the highest odds of winning (1/32 = 3.125%) while Kurt Russell, Russell Crowe, Russell Brand, and Russell Simmons are all tied for having the worst starting odds (1/256 = .391%).108.162.219.91 09:19, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I may be worth mentioning that the bracketing trees resemble hierarchical clustering dendrograms in which some string similarity metric was used as a distance function. 141.101.91.7 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Although the comic is formatted as a tournament bracket, there are hints that it is in fact a dendrogram based on string similarity, in a similar way to how trees of evolutionary relationships between proteins are formed. We see this especially in the "Russell" group where there is equal similarity between any name containing "Russell" and so that group is not resolved into two separate forks. If readers wish to recreate such an analysis for themselves they can take the text on here paste it into a multiple sequence aligner, press Submit, then after processing click Phylogenetic Tree and scroll down. 141.101.99.74 12:46, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Somewhat disagree. There is no "string similarity" between domino and checker. The connection between the names seems to be that there are games named Dominos and Checkers. They would not be together if it was based on strictly on string similarity or generated automatically by software without human intervention.108.162.215.190 17:09, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Is there any significance to the number of entries? 52 on the left side but only 51 on the right? 108.162.216.84 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Title text

Changed the reference of the Title Text from Doctor Who (who is already listed in the comic) to Dr. Dre, as the phrasing of the Title Text seems like a very direct reference to the 2001 song "Forgot About Dre." -- Conquistador (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Probably would have been better to add it as an option since we're clearly far from certain - -- Stumpy (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Why not Zoidberg? --RhyvenNZ 198.41.238.41 09:55, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Pretty sure Doctor Who is covered by "The Doctor". He doesn't go by "Who" in the show. He's just the Doctor. I think the missing doctor is House. 108.162.215.127 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Dr. Pepper, maybe? Does "staring" or "forgotten" have to do with it? 108.162.237.156 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Whatagainnow? 108.162.222.178 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Dr. Oz? Dr. Phil? Dr. Watson? Dr. Kavorkian? Dr. Seuss? Wasn't there a famous literary work, The Lost Island of Dr. Moreau? I agree that Dr. House and/or house calls could be a missing candidate for the bracket. But then, there are a ton of 'Sirs' that didn't make the list. -- GAKDragon (talk) (please sign your posts appropriately with the appropriate user and talk page links using ~~~~)

Doctor Teeth! Jarod997 (talk) 13:50, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Or is "The Doctor" http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Doctor? 108.162.215.108 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The Doctor is already in the bracket. --141.101.99.49 10:40, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

It's Doctor House - definitely and finally! -- Raydleemsc (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Definitely "Doc" Brown: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Brown 108.162.221.171 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

It's clearly Dr. Doolittle. Can't imagine why no one has realized this yet. 108.162.238.193 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Could the joke simply be "there are way too many famous doctors", so even though it's arguably the most numerous category in the bracket, some are still "forgotten"? 108.162.254.164 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Probably not talking about doctor who, however he could be referencing The Silence, which is a an alien race, on that show, which you immediately forget about after losing sight of it. -- KroniK907 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I immediately thought of Amy's wedding in Dr Who S5Ep13 where she needed to remember the doctor to bring him back. Too obscure? Blu003 (talk) 13:07, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Hardly. You want obscure, try The Doctor's granddaughter. Yep, he had/has one. --108.162.237.144 13:41, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Dr. Martha Jones, from Doctor Who? The Doctor Donna? Even the companions on the show are Doctors. 108.162.222.178 03:55, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Y'know, I can't help but feel that this is a little to bland and unfinished for xkcd. I'm willing to bet that the picture updates with winners. May be sorely disappointed though. 108.162.219.119 15:02, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Can't help but feel that there's a better way to lay this explanation out, but I haven't been able to come up with it. Maybe some sort of table listing all the different groups, with people allowed to be in more than one group? 141.101.98.232 15:18, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I personally don't love the large listing of people. It is a bit bland, but more importantly, it doesn't really show the linkages between the participants (though most people ought to be able to figure out these overt links Jeff Gordon... Jeff Daniels... it doesn't need explanation. That said, the current format doesn't quite demonstrate the chain-link nature of some matchups like:

• Body Shop
• Bath and Body Works
• Bed Bath & Beyond
• Beyond Thunderdome
• Beyoncé.

I wouldn't mind a format with that kind of bolding. I think that shows the chain of links better than the first to being grouped "businesses with the word "body" and the second two "things with the word beyond" and "Beyoncé" separately. Similarly, Jeff Daniels belongs to both the "Jeff"s and the "J. Daniels"es. TheHYPO (talk) 15:48, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't categorize Fats Domino and Chubby Checker (just) as games. Given that they're directly under Ryan Adams and Bryan Adams, I'd have identified them as 50's singers, with some physical similarities. KenWhitesell (talk) 16:17, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Agree. I put in the identification about games without knowing who Chubby Checker was.108.162.215.190 17:09, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Then you are one of today's lucky 10,000! 1053 Chubby CheckerZeimusu (talk) 21:32, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

celebrity deathmatch

This reminds me of Celebrity Deathmatch. Then have:

• Charles Manson vs. Marilyn Manson
• Backstreet Boys vs. Beastie Boys
• The Three Stooges vs. The Three Tenors
• Kevin Costner vs. Kevin Smith
• John Cusack vs. John Malkovich
• David Blaine vs. David Copperfield
• Corey Feldman vs. Corey Haim
• Jack Black vs. Jack White

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Celebrity_Deathmatch_episodes -- Bart9h (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Who is Jeff Gordan? There's an extremely famous NASCAR driver named Jeff Gordon, but I don't know of a Jeff Gordan. Significant or typo? 108.162.238.182 16:07, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Where is Colin Furze? And Arnold Swarzenegger? And all other people I never heard of? -- 141.101.104.116 21:12, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

What about my favourite triple: Robbie Williams, Robin Williams and Robyn Williams? -- Ian N.

This is a major "Get Out Of My Head, Randall" comic for me. The day before this comic was posted, my friend and I were discussing a "Hunger Games" type simulation being done on 8chan involving loads and loads of characters across genres, and he had asked me about the probability of a particular match-up occurring with a desired outcome. It led to a long and detailed math conversation. The original match-up has been bumped out of existence, but this image still lives on. Appropriately, the comic was posted on my birthday. 2spooky4me. 108.162.210.177 06:01, 26 May 2015 (UTC)