
Randall Munroe, XKCD Creator, Goes Back to High School - wesd
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/science/randall-munroe-xkcd-science-textbook.html
======
jonahrd
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.

~~~
TheOneTrueKyle
You have to keep in mind that this is also entertainment

~~~
jeffwass
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.

~~~
Nadya
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...

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

~~~
joezydeco
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.

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

[http://smile.amazon.com/Manga-Guide-Databases-Mana-
Takahashi...](http://smile.amazon.com/Manga-Guide-Databases-Mana-
Takahashi/dp/1593271905)

~~~
dragontamer
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.

------
gyardley
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.

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

~~~
peeters
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.

~~~
SilasX
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.

------
ryandrake
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.

~~~
jawns
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](http://www.explainxkcd.com). But the _way_ that
they matter does not depend on them being drawn in a more elaborate style.

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

------
api_or_ipa
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.

------
cbhl
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.

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

~~~
flying_kangaroo
Good old clickbait titles. Gotta love 'em.

~~~
malz
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.

~~~
ghaff
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.

~~~
jccc
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.

------
Chirael
Thing explainer meets thing learners?

------
mr_sturd
The next great explainer?

~~~
cableshaft
In ten years time: Cosmos, the XKCD edition

~~~
gooseus
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.

~~~
saganus
Ditto.

Hopefully not in 10 years though, but much sooner.

I would also fund such a thing in a heartbeat.

------
colinmegill
This looks terrible

------
loco5niner
clickbait title... ugg

