Comic #6490: probability

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Description

Here's the transcription of the comic text:

Panel 1: "Suppose there’s a square with a side length between 0 and 4 units."

Panel 2: "You don’t know its length and you don’t know the distribution of probabilities. Reasonably, you say it’s equally likely to be more or less than two units long."

Panel 3: "You’d also like to know its area. Since area is side length squared, you know it must be between 0 and 16, with an equal chance of being greater or less than 8."

Panel 4: "But a square with an area of 8 has a side length of 2√2, not 2!"

Panel 5: "So which is it, mother fuckers?"

Panel 6: "I thought philosophy of probability would be the easiest A in a math degree, and now I’m not even sure reality is real."

Panel 7: "‘Reality’? That’s just a convenient assumption for calculations."

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