Talk:2595: Advanced Techniques

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 22:33, 22 March 2022 by ProphetZarquon (talk | contribs) (It's not an alternative view, it's what ties the whole thing together to make a joke!)
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The title text refers to Noether's theorem. Trimeta (talk) 04:24, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

This is my first explanation GcGYSF(asterisk)P(vertical line)e (talk) 05:41, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

This sounds a lot like Laplace or Fourier transforms, converting a function into a different where it is easier to manipulate then reversing the transformation. 108.162.245.173 06:28, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

When I was learning to use fourier transforms in EE, they were very straightforwardly (and accurately) described as "transferring the function to the Spectral Domain". 172.70.110.241 22:45, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it's proper to refer to someone as a "giant" while explaining a comic that references mythological creatures. Unless it was literal of course, but as far as I'm aware giants never existed. 162.158.111.12 11:28, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

I think she may actually have been a wizard-giant.Iggynelix (talk) 13:41, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Not my area, but I am passingly familiar with the Gauss–Kuzmin–Wirsing Operator, Dragon Curves, and Hilbert Spaces (guessing that the "arrow" refers to scalar vector?). Some type of iterative/recursive conversion that yields to analysis of the period? Probably not pertinent to the joke which is more about the fanciful names attached to mathematical concepts, constructs, and processes 108.162.245.173 11:53, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

I find it interesting that despite now being the day after release (or well into the next day, my time, which is usually sufficient — and I'm not in a DST zone yet) the site explanation hasn't explained (or thought it has explained) every single element of the in-comic 'explanation' — even if not established the (probably) nonsensical whole. As an example, I don't yet see the obvious dragon element that is both alluded to and seemingly illustrated upon the board-notes. Leaving this here to help near-future editors who might have time to bullet-point/tabulate/sub-heading these things and just need that extra bit of info. 162.158.159.125 15:01, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

There is the misquote of Arthur Clarke "All sufficiently advanced [strike]technologies[/strike] mathematical techniques are indistinguishable from magic." Arachrah (talk)

Fix it!
ProphetZarquon (talk) 23:28, 19 March 2022 (UTC)
I'm not sure what Arachrah means, because technologies is included in the original version: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I have corrected the explanation to that and also added link to wiki. --Kynde (talk) 08:25, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

The explanation should decide whether the teacher is Miss Lenhart, or Blondie. I think it's Miss Lenhart. Nitpicking (talk) 17:02, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

A teaching Blondie is always Miss Lenhart. It has been corrected before I came here. --Kynde (talk) 08:25, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

That dragon looks suspiciously like Trogdor...162.158.146.73

It just looks like a normal wyvern to me, though the perspective doesn't give us much detail to help tell those two cases apart. I think if it were Trogdor though, fewer liberties would have been taken with the shape of the dragon's body. (To be confident we would have to figure out the original problem and use Gauss' operator ourselves to get a more detailed look, which seems difficult.) 141.101.104.11 16:25, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

"Critical Role: Call of the Netherdeep" released this week, for D&D 5e. ProphetZarquon (talk) 23:28, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Come to think of it, we do use fantasy-sounding expressions in math: e.g. titanic prime, imaginary part, infinite field, ideals, friendly numbers, brute force attack. I'm pretty sure there are many more fun examples. Yosei (talk) 04:16, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

PS: "Sexy primes" and "latus rectum" are real technical terms. Yosei (talk) 04:16, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Its weird how this fantastic math have failed to solve the 3n+1 problem. Because I do believe I have solved it within this week. 172.70.246.55 18:31, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm glad the wiki format saves old versions of explanations, because it would be a shame if that incomplete notice would be gone forever once the explanation is complete enough. Made me chuckle! 141.101.104.11 08:23, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I suspect there's also an aspect of how, if you don't know the mathematical concepts involved, some of these solution methods can seem more like the author is just casting spells. The context that most immediately comes to me is solving integrals with weird techniques that involve mapping to other planes and such. I would say that solving integrals was the first place I really saw creativity being heavily focused on in my math curriculum. Trlkly (talk) 08:43, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. 172.70.250.231 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
I agree as well. "An alternative view" seems like the wrong way to state this: I believe the entire joke is that Randall is comparing the processes described in the preceding paragraph (transforming a function to another domain & such), to the "sufficiently advanced technology" of Clarke's "third law". It's not an either/or proposition: The references to advanced maths are there, to illustrate how fine the line is between complex operations, & "magic"; & the D&D metaphors are there, to bring the "magic" into a context that sounds more structured & math-like, than some arbitrary 'hocus pocus'.
ProphetZarquon (talk) 22:33, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Re. '[metaphor] is not usually used in math classes.' - it's used a lot more than you might initially assume - there's at least one example in this explanation, where it talks about transforming between 'domains'.162.158.34.119 09:18, 22 March 2022 (UTC)