Randall Munroe, XKCD Creator, Goes Back to High School | Hacker News Reader

Randall Munroe, XKCD Creator, Goes Back to High School

nytimes.com

115 pointswesd66 comments

I'm not a huge fan of the way he explains things with common vocabulary. Sure it makes sense to me because I understand that he means "organs" by bags and it's a kinda nice metaphor, but I feel like some of these explanations are just additionally complex because of the need to work around vocab limitations, and to someone who doesn't already know the material might be hard to follow.

It's a useful example to people who need to provide Easy Read documents for people with a learning disability.

You can't just take the most used words and hope for the best. It takes real effort to get something understandable.

You have to keep in mind that this is also entertainment

For me the concept got old really quickly in 'Thing Explainer' to point that while browsing in a book shop I went from quite interested in buying it to absolutely zero interest in the span of a couple minutes.

The constraint of using only a limited number of common words made it feel like I was reading someone's speech impediment.

I wouldn't read an educational material about how a submarine works, a helicopter works, and a microwave oven works all on the same day. I don't imagine many people would - especially if it were more technically laden in its vocabulary.

Likewise - I wouldn't read all of 'Thing Explainer' in a single sitting either. A page every now and then and you don't get bogged down with reading simple language for hours on end.

Reading over simplified things gets as tiring as reading overly complex material - because both can be quite mentally taxing. The increased difficulty of reading "eight and one" instead of "nine" gets more tiring than one might think...

Agree that it is not really a cover-to-cover book, but it works very well as a coffee table book to browse through when you are bored. We have a copy at our office, and our guests love it.

True, things might have to be explained in a more verbose way due to vocabulary limitations, but I think the trade off of breaking things down into simpler parts and steps is worth it. It matches well with having to explain to my manager (or anyone else) what I've been programming all day.

By using a novel vocabulary, the ideas can enter your memory in a different way. Maybe a more lasting way. Its been done in other fields (language learning).

I just kept wishing he had a glossary. There are still some I can't figure out like it said a lady bug isn't related to beetles. But maybe he didn't mean a lady bug?

He's doing educational strips to appear in a textbook (just in case you'd prefer not to reward that bait-y headline).

Not to be too cynical (but here I go anyway)...but how long before it becomes "hey, instead of a few funny comics, let's do a whole textbook this way!"?

Then we continue the de-evolution into a mix of hillbilly, valleygirl, inner-city slang and various grunts.

Please forgive us, Mike Judge.

Randall Munroe has a response to your lamentation: https://xkcd.com/603/

The Manga Guides to Databases, Statistics, Calculus, Molecular Biology, etc. are all highly rated.

http://smile.amazon.com/Manga-Guide-Databases-Mana-Takahashi...

That database fairy really knew what she was talking about. And that's why the Princess was able to join (tables) with the prince.

I'm not kidding btw. Its a funny book.

I learnt special relativity from a book such as this, in the ninth grade.

Larry Gonick's "Cartoon Guide" series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Gonick) is marvellous for this, to the extent that I'd assume that's what you're referring to–except that he doesn't seem to have one on general relativity. Do you remember what exactly the book was?

I think it was "Einstein for beginners" by Joseph Schwartz and Michael McGuinness. Definitely only special relativity. There's no way to explain general rel without some heavy duty math i think.

So... Randall Munroe's 'Thing Explainer'? I actually purchased this and it is both informative, has a bit of quirky humor in the illustrations, and makes a great learning material.

Knowing the proper name of something is often less important than understanding how it works.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0544668251/

> Knowing the proper name of something is often less important than understanding how it works.

As far as personal edification and skills go, knowing the proper name of something is pretty much worthless. Only when you have to interact with other flesh-bags does proper naming become a concern.

And even then, "proper naming" can be worse than "improper naming" if it's too abstract or semantically loaded. Consider javascript's promises, could you call them continuation monads? Sure thing. Would it generally be a good idea? If you want nobody to dare come close to it I guess.

[0] which includes yourself-from-the-future for writers or developers I guess

> flesh-bags does proper naming become a concern

You mean every day?

No, because you don't attempt to communicate the entirety or your knowledge and understanding every day to every person you encounter.

> No, because you don't attempt to communicate the entirety or your knowledge and understanding every day to every person you encounter.

Well, I knew I was doing something wrong!

Totally agreed. However, I've found that learning something new without regards for the actual name for it helps me build a solid, abstract representation in the mind. But like you say, communicating these ideas becomes cumbersome when you don't speak the common language :)

And here's Feynman on the same topic: https://youtu.be/ga_7j72CVlc?t=19

Good lord, enough with the pedants complaining about the title already. We are all adults and know that sometimes article headlines are not exact literal representations of their contents.

It's one thing for a headline to be inexact, it's another thing to be a standard clickbait perversion of the contents.

I don't get why people are seeing this as egregious clickbait. It's taking well known saying "going back to school" and using it in a figurative, instead of literal, sense.

He IS "revisiting" high school, in a sense. Most people graduate high school and never look back. Munroe is looking back. The title did not say he would be a student.

Agreed. I like maltz's suggested clickbait title "The shocking change at your kids' high school you absolutely must know about".

Call me crazy, but I wish news articles would focus more on being information and less on being comics or novels intended to drag you along.

Choosing a cute, misleading title over an accurate one seems like the wrong choice.

Yes, we are all adult excellent phd. prof. experts professionals critical-acclaimed well balanced peer reviewed lotus-effected post-ironic iconic humans.

I reserve a few down-votes each day just for people who rag on titles for being "click bait". I mean, really, why is everyone so obsessed with every article's title? Besides summarizing the content of the article (sometimes in a clever way), a good title gets you to click on it.

I'm probably in the minority but I never grokked the whole XKCD "stick figure" thing. I'm not an art critic, but if you're going to put your work out there in the format of a comic strip, wouldn't you try to take the time to draw something more... I don't know... artful? Theres not a huge difference between a bunch of stick figures with walls of text crammed into each frame and simple text prose.

Minimalism is a form of art.

It's a philosophy you can apply to art.

Successful comics tend to have very little correlation with artistic ability... Take Dilbert and Garfield, for example. I think half the Garfield strips I've seen are the same frame repeated with different speech bubbles. Quantity has a quality all its own.

I think you're going to get pretty heavily downvoted, but I want to try to respond to you as if you're not trolling, but generally don't understand what all the fuss is about.

Munroe's technique is a type of minimalism.

By drawing mostly in stick figures and simple forms, Munroe is giving you only what is needed to set the scene, similar to a theatrical production with minimal props, costumes, and sets. You get to use your imagination to fill in all the rest.

In the xkcd world, it doesn't particularly matter that Cueball has a simple circle for a head, with no facial features present, because Munroe's comedy is not primarily a visual type of comedy. The humor is found in the text, and in the situations he sets up, not in the facial expressions of the characters or in elaborately drawn backgrounds.

Which is not to say that the visuals don't matter. They certainly do. Looking at an xkcd strip is a lot different than reading the transcript on http://www.explainxkcd.com. But the way that they matter does not depend on them being drawn in a more elaborate style.

Scott McCloud's very excellent book, Understanding Comics, goes into great detail about this. Minimalism in comics is often used for focus.

Thanks for the reply. XKCD is known to be beloved by tech folks so you can't really criticize it and not expect downvotes--it's no big deal. I actually enjoy the writing. To me it seems minimalist to the point where it's unnecessary to even deliver it in comic form.

He doesn't have to be a great artist, and the style lets him complete the comics in less time. Clearly his ideas are interesting enough that the comic is wildly popular regardless.

Indeed you are no art critic. And I doubt anyone would defend XKCD as great technical art (although some of its experiments are really cool and well thought out). It's just a medium for a message (and that medium suits perfectly the message and let's not forget the medium is the message anyway).

You might not enjoy it but if it's because of the art direction and art direction is what usually entertains you then maybe you shouldn't read it ? Don't try to believe you don't enjoy it because it's not up to your standards (or what you think is today's standard) when it really is not to your taste. Don't make it sound like it's an argument because it's not, it's a preference (which is as valuable and as good in its own right). FTR I upvoted you because I don't believe you should be downvoted because you badly defended your opinion.

It's easier to identify with a stick figure that could be "you," than a drawing that's more clearly of someone specific, someone else.

I personally loved XKCD, I no longer read it, unless he does one of those epic comic.

You are not as small a minority as you think you are. I talked to a lot of people who never cared about his comics because of the overly simplistic style. Some even see it as some sort of arrogance: "I'm so clever I can draw shit and people still love it." I don't agree, but I can understand why people think that.

He did experiment with different styles at the beginning, clearly he decided he would not waste time on pixels and instead put his efforts where his talent truly is, in the little nerdy things he had to say.

I think the simple drawings are a part of the charm. That being said, there have been a number of more elaborate comics.

e.g. https://xkcd.com/1190/ "Time"

https://xkcd.com/1110/ "Click and Drag"

https://xkcd.com/1416/ "Pixels"

Also, if you don't know about the alt text then you've been missing half the joke.

Thanks for posting those links! I forgot about "Time" it's one of the best he's ever done in my opinion.

I posted this a few days ago but got no answers.

What's the best way to 'read' the xkcd Time storyline? I saw an animated gif someone made a long time ago but it was hard to follow requiring pausing on frames to read text.

http://geekwagon.net/projects/xkcd1190/ is an interactive viewer with configurable pausing on 'interesting' frames.

> artful?

Not the goal. The word 'comic' does not imply it. It's like asking confusedly why your posts are not in haiku form.

> Theres not a huge difference between a bunch of stick figures with walls of text crammed into each frame and simple text prose.

They help delineate conversation, but you're right. There's not a big difference between those. Note that a lot of what he does is just text. (Also note that many of the comics are not just stick figures with text.)

But your implication that there should be a difference, I don't understand that. The format serves the contents well.

In an interview when asked why he draws stick figures, he answered something like, "It turns out that drawing is hard."

My professors sometimes would put a relevant xkcd on the last page of our midterms/finals as a small gift. Small stuff like this always made my day in university.

Gee, I feel like it'd be a decade before a significant number of students got their hands on these updated textbooks with comics inside them, since schools have such long textbook refresh cycles.

My other worry is that any such textbooks would be so riddled with errors that it would be undeserving of Munroe's comics -- I got new math(s) textbooks in 4th and 5th grade, and my classmates and I often found errors in the answer key in the back. If the teacher was going off an answer key and had an incorrect answer, sometimes we'd band up and go up to the chalkboard to prove we were right (by showing our work on the board). If there was time after we might even conjecture about the error the textbook authors originally made to get the wrong answer in the back.

Randall Munroe is not going back to high school, his drawings are being incorporated into high school text books.

Good old clickbait titles. Gotta love 'em.

I don't see this as classic clickbait (as opposed to, say, "The shocking change at your kids' high school you absolutely must know about") so much as an attempt at cleverness, which is not uncommon for human-interest NYT stories even if it obscures the actual meaning.

I think a headline that intentionally implies something false, and more compelling than the truth, is comfortably within the definition of clickbait.

Cleverness would let us in on the metaphor without us having to read the article.

There are certain patterns of annoying headlines online. However, pretty much every headline written anywhere (online or off) is supposed to be clickbait in that it's supposed to grab you to read the article. And, if anything, SEO probably discourages the use of headlines that are too clever. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with this headline but I get it if someone wants to argue for headlines that are "just the facts" followed by an inverted pyramid story.

There is exactly no one arguing for just-the-facts headlines to the exclusion of any with style.

The objection is to intentional misrepresentation of the story you get after you click. This one clearly does that.

Even the example given above ("Shocking!" "You wouldn't believe!!!") is the kind of headline that virtually always misrepresents the shock(!) and disbelief(!) one will experience upon giving it the click it so desperately wants.

> "The shocking change at your kids' high school you absolutely must know about"

In that case the superlatives are blatant puffery, and the factual part of the line is accurate. That's not nearly as bad as flat-out lying, like the title on this article.

One weird bread mold that cures diseases!

Excellent use of your thinking bag!

Wait, you're saying a mass media publication deliberately chose a title to draw interest instead of to concisely convey what they would learn from its content?

Now I think I've seen everything...

Thing explainer meets thing learners?

The next great explainer?

In ten years time: Cosmos, the XKCD edition

I would fund a kickstarter today that was an XKCD comic adaptation of Carl Sagan's original Cosmos series with asides to update any relevant science information.

Ditto.

Hopefully not in 10 years though, but much sooner.

I would also fund such a thing in a heartbeat.

This looks terrible

clickbait title... ugg

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