tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post3636650959100246531..comments2024-01-05T02:37:59.932-06:00Comments on XKCD-SUCKS presents: Died In A Blogging Accident: Comic 985: That's a looooot of alt-text.Gamer_2k4http://www.blogger.com/profile/17079715817544544279noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-59213048100285829882011-12-09T11:25:31.610-06:002011-12-09T11:25:31.610-06:00So basically you're whining for 7 paragraphs ...So basically you're whining for 7 paragraphs that you had to read one too many sentences.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-44840042168890224792011-12-06T09:47:58.628-06:002011-12-06T09:47:58.628-06:00Disagree with the review.
I felt like Randall'...Disagree with the review.<br /><br />I felt like Randall's main point was so uninteresting (ie nerdish pedantry) that the extra jokes added something (ie an element of humour)!<br /><br />Personally I don't mind more than one joke per comic, as xkcd jokes have such a low chance of being funny that having more than one increases the chance that the comic will be worth looking at...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-82408105390439571932011-12-04T10:02:41.831-06:002011-12-04T10:02:41.831-06:00Godspeed, anonGodspeed, anonAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-8329270996346258962011-12-03T11:14:14.923-06:002011-12-03T11:14:14.923-06:00Thanks SinbadEV. There indeed is a transcription.
...Thanks SinbadEV. There indeed is a transcription.<br /><br />I leeched all the html to my drive. I'll see if I can parse the visible text in some meaningful way and make some graphs. No doubt someone has done all this before, but it does not matter... it'll be "fun".<br /><br />-anon 2:46Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-55073039041466946952011-12-03T09:20:42.674-06:002011-12-03T09:20:42.674-06:00View the page source of an XKCD comic... there is ...View the page source of an XKCD comic... there is a div element with id="transcript" and style="display: none;" that contains the transcript of the comic if it is available.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03136439807907883016noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-27239394452761692192011-12-03T04:31:03.112-06:002011-12-03T04:31:03.112-06:00I expect the comics have been transcribed to facil...I expect the comics have been transcribed to facilitate a search function (most popular webcomics have fans working on such a project), so most of the legwork for making such a calculation has probably already been done.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-54228380677512709392011-12-03T02:46:12.056-06:002011-12-03T02:46:12.056-06:00Interesting graph. I wonder if it would be possibl...Interesting graph. I wonder if it would be possible to calculate the number of words in the comics themselves. Without doing it by hand, that is!<br /><br />Then again that task could be "crowdsourced"? Are there enough readers in this blog to facilitate that task, or would the forumites be interested to do it?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-708403746648329672011-12-02T13:13:15.706-06:002011-12-02T13:13:15.706-06:00Looks like a heart attack.Looks like a heart attack.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-58028928924377696872011-12-02T11:52:11.000-06:002011-12-02T11:52:11.000-06:00So I totally asked the Xkcd forumites if they'...So I totally asked the Xkcd forumites if they'd be willing to make a graph of alt-text length vs comic number. Apparently they were, and more than one person responded. The most timely full one:<br /><br />http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/2136/titletext.png<br /><br />It's a bit more varied than I expected, but you can easily see the length creep up over time. Oh, and I spent a minute in MS paint trying to add in a rough trendline. I estimate that the trendline would predict a tootlip of 30 characters at comic 0, and something like 160 characters for the present day. <br /><br />[In the highly unlikely event that the trend continues linearly, in 10 years comics like 862 would be normal in terms of character count.]SoRCFShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07881910162343051517noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-18351317283970865882011-12-02T09:37:58.834-06:002011-12-02T09:37:58.834-06:00Also, why do doctors use odds ratios instead of st...Also, why do doctors use odds ratios instead of straight percentages or likelihoods? And what's up with positive predictive value vs. negative predictive value? Can't we all just adopt a signal detection theory approach and talk in terms of d-primes and Cohen's d effect sizes? I feel a giant infographic about foibles in the communication of fractions and changes in fractions over time. Also error bars: ever heard of them?<br /><br />xkcd is the new Andy Rooney. Leaner and meaner and faceless.Brenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13482462671043316793noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3055705617165411909.post-68816814213197560372011-12-02T06:26:15.027-06:002011-12-02T06:26:15.027-06:00I think he was trying (with the extra terrible jok...I think he was trying (with the extra terrible jokes in the beginning) to make it clear that this is a candidate who's support has fallen drastically but that newsman commenting on it makes it ambiguous if this has causes the candidates numbers to drop by 19% of their current level (so down to about 19%) or by 19 percentage points (do down to 1%).<br /><br />You are totally right that he missed his own point... which wasn't funny in the first place... I just thing the "extra" jokes were MEANT to have a purpose...<br /><br />The alt-text is just "stuff I couldn't fit into the panel" though... if he had stretch the comic out to three panels he probably could have fit all that stuff into the panel and then the alt-text could have been the "I hate the ambiguity ..." part.<br /><br />Anyway... Dude is going to lose with 20% 19% or 1% of the vote so the joke is was lost from the start. If the candidate had 60% of the vote and lost "%17" and the ambiguity was between him now having "50% of the vote" or "43 percentage points" then it would at least make sense and he could make a joke based on that, but... I just don't see any way to redeem it... there's nothing to work with.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03136439807907883016noreply@blogger.com