Difference between revisions of "Talk:1985: Meteorologist"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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: Yep - all three of the 'experts' express problems that I have with every single weather forecast.  It gets worse though.  Our local TV station uses a rotating 3D graphic of downtown Austin where the shadows of the buildings flicker violently as it rotates - they've been doing this for YEARS.  I'm a 3D computer graphics professional and I know PRECISELY why that is happening (they are rendering the back-faces of the building polygons in the shadow rendering pass instead of the front-faces...trust me on this one!)...I could fix the bug with ONE LINE OF CODE - and I bet I could find and fix it within 20 minutes if left alone with the source code.  But when I call them and BEG to be allowed t...'''SECURITY!!!'''  [[User:SteveBaker|SteveBaker]] ([[User talk:SteveBaker|talk]]) 17:36, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
 
: Yep - all three of the 'experts' express problems that I have with every single weather forecast.  It gets worse though.  Our local TV station uses a rotating 3D graphic of downtown Austin where the shadows of the buildings flicker violently as it rotates - they've been doing this for YEARS.  I'm a 3D computer graphics professional and I know PRECISELY why that is happening (they are rendering the back-faces of the building polygons in the shadow rendering pass instead of the front-faces...trust me on this one!)...I could fix the bug with ONE LINE OF CODE - and I bet I could find and fix it within 20 minutes if left alone with the source code.  But when I call them and BEG to be allowed t...'''SECURITY!!!'''  [[User:SteveBaker|SteveBaker]] ([[User talk:SteveBaker|talk]]) 17:36, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
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::Hah, that's pretty funny, but understandably frustrating. I rarely watch the weather though... that is why I find it a little strange I liked it so much. Have you actually called them though? I mean, if you have proof to show you are a professional...[[User:Linker|Linker]] ([[User talk:Linker|talk]]) 12:33, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
  
 
; Randall
 
; Randall

Revision as of 12:33, 26 April 2018

I’ve wondered about this (from both the math and software development perspectives anyway, not the linguist), so I look forward to seeing some actual answers as the explanation gets filled in :) PotatoGod (talk) 16:36, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

The weather service has a nice explanation of this. After reading it you come away understanding that the percentage chance is... still almost impossible to discern :) 172.68.189.205 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I really liked this one. I don't know why though. Linker (talk) 17:35, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Yep - all three of the 'experts' express problems that I have with every single weather forecast. It gets worse though. Our local TV station uses a rotating 3D graphic of downtown Austin where the shadows of the buildings flicker violently as it rotates - they've been doing this for YEARS. I'm a 3D computer graphics professional and I know PRECISELY why that is happening (they are rendering the back-faces of the building polygons in the shadow rendering pass instead of the front-faces...trust me on this one!)...I could fix the bug with ONE LINE OF CODE - and I bet I could find and fix it within 20 minutes if left alone with the source code. But when I call them and BEG to be allowed t...SECURITY!!! SteveBaker (talk) 17:36, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
Hah, that's pretty funny, but understandably frustrating. I rarely watch the weather though... that is why I find it a little strange I liked it so much. Have you actually called them though? I mean, if you have proof to show you are a professional...Linker (talk) 12:33, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
Randall
wonders about something and puts it in an xkcd comic.
Explainxkcd participants
answer Randall's questions for him (and all of his readers).

TobyBartels (talk) 20:52, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Am I allowed to be slightly offended by the suggestion that "information being conveyed is to people, who would probably be able to interpret it easily"? Okay, I'm a software engineer, but even if I weren't I'd still not know whether the report system defines "12:00" as "in the period between 12:00 and 13:00" or "between 11:30 and 12:30". I usually wonder, but get so many variants of weather reports exposed to me that I can't be bothered to check which arbitrary decision any given one has made, and whether they all agree. A software engineer might instantly spot the ambiguity, but it affects everyone. Fluppeteer (talk) 23:58, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Clearly, what that sentence is trying to convey is that software developers are no longer considered "people" - since, you know, everyone knows that software developers have actually been replaced by robots. ;p
I agree that that section is pretty poorly worded (in more ways than one) and was likely written by somebody quickly trying to get as much explanation out as possible so that future people could fix it. So, I'm going to see if I can fix that sentence and the surrounding section. Jeudi Violist (talk) 01:40, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

As someone who's asked many questions along these lines, this comic makes me happy. Elvenivle (talk) 01:53, 26 April 2018 (UTC)