“Detector! Has the sun gone nova?”
“Calculating… results available in 9 minutes and 14 seconds.”
I don’t like this comic because the frequentist statistician is operating with an effective n=1. You’d ask the detector 1000 more times, and use those results to get your answer.
Missing: any sort of physicist who will tell them both that the forward model says that the sun won’t explode for a few billion years, and so far that model hasn’t been wrong.
Isn’t our sun too small to explode at all? IIRC the sun will expand enough to engulf the earth’s orbit but will eventually shrink to a dwarf.
Too small to supernova and black hole, yes. But large enough to have a decent boom. Probably at least red giant, then a nova (explosion casting off outer layers) leaving a white dwarf remnant.
If I’m around by then, my model of medical science progress is wrong ;)
E: I’m wrong. That casting off of the outer gas envelope is not a nova. It’s just a death throe of some sort.
Minor correction: in a few billion years our sun will expand into its red giant death phase.
Also: our star can’t go nova by our understanding of astrophysics. If it actually can, then we might need to throw out a lot of astrophysics, including predictions on when our star will expand.
Also also: the odds of the dice giving double 6s is MUCH higher than our sun going nova at any point in time even if it could go nova and was overdue.
That last part is what the Bayesian scientist is wagering on, it’s not missing, as op suggested
Ah, gotcha. I tried learning Bayesian probability once and failed utterly. One of the only classes I just barely passed (stat was the other). My brain just barely computes it.
I remember inserting this comic in my class paper comparing frequentist and bayesian interpretations of probability during my PhD. Aah, good times.
I understand some of these words
Brb, gotta go eat a crayon
For the rest of us:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1132:_Frequentists_vs._Bayesians
There’s various technicalities of how and where Beyesian statistics apply to the world but I really interpreted it as meaning “if the world is ending then it doesn’t matter and if not then I’m up $50”. The Beyesian is just ruthlessly practical.
