Editing Talk:2554: Gift Exchange

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I assumed this comic was saying that political scientists ''like'' looking at the data from "surveys". And "it's complicated" reminds me of a survey option. The title text seems to be about survey ratings, which are from a 1-5 or 1-10 scale. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.35.244|172.69.35.244]] 17:57, 13 December 2021 (UTC)


Shouldn't someone mention that this comic came out a few weeks before Christmas, when it is customary for people in certain Christian countries to give gifts to each other (citation needed)?


I thought that the point was that Ponytail was being given the present of having to organise the fair gift exchange, not that she was giving her family a gift of it.
*Ponytail says "Ugh" at the start, implying that ''she'' doesn't want to organize the exchange, but since Cueball in this strip is a political scientist, she's offering him the gift of getting to organize it. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.75.39|162.158.75.39]] 04:42, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

''white elephant gift exchange''?  We call it ''Evil Santa'' a play on ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Santa Secret Santa]'' [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.15|108.162.249.15]] 09:00, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
*Oh, I now see that there are a number of listed variants on the Secret Santa page [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.107|108.162.249.107]] 09:05, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Might the title also be a reference to Matcel Mauss' classical text "The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies" ? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.238.9|162.158.238.9]] 09:43, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Is the mention of "white elephant" appropriate here? The comic itself doesn't seem to imply that this is about "white elephant" gifts, but rather the opposite (desired, or fair, gifts) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.134.89|172.70.134.89]] 18:54, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

It might be worth pointing out in this article that this particular problem was solved ([https://github.com/chrisokasaki/TradeMaximizer]) over 14 years ago by a mathematician (a useful branch of knowledge), Dr. Chris Okasaki, not by a political ‘scientist’ (har har). The persons involved in the gift exchange create want lists, a tool takes the want lists and creates a bipartite graph with certain properties then finds a perfect matching representing the optimal trades, ensuring that everyone who trades something they brought for something else gets something they like better than what they started with.
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	It might be worth pointing out in this article that this particular problem was solved ([https://github.com/chrisokasaki/TradeMaximizer]) over 14 years ago by a mathematician (a useful branch of knowledge), Dr. Chris Okasaki, not by a political ‘scientist’ (har har). The persons involved in the gift exchange create want lists, a tool takes the want lists and creates a bipartite graph with certain properties then finds a perfect matching representing the optimal trades, ensuring that everyone who trades something they brought for something else gets something they like better than what they started with.		It might be worth pointing out in this article that this particular problem was solved ([https://github.com/chrisokasaki/TradeMaximizer]) over 14 years ago by a mathematician (a useful branch of knowledge), Dr. Chris Okasaki, not by a political ‘scientist’ (har har). The persons involved in the gift exchange create want lists, a tool takes the want lists and creates a bipartite graph with certain properties then finds a perfect matching representing the optimal trades, ensuring that everyone who trades something they brought for something else gets something they like better than what they started with.
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−	The comics also reminds of a scene in Neal Stephenson's '''Cryptonomicon''' - one of the heroes, mathematician, solved the problem of dividing an inheritance among relatives by letting them place items on a 2D coordinate plot drawn on a parking lot (and spending a week on supercomputer to calculate the final results). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.173\|172.70.90.173]] 00:01, 14 January 2022 (UTC) Edheldil