This one. I understand what a null hypothesis is but I’m not getting the punchline or the mouseover punchline.
I do think Wikipedia link is funny.
He thinks “the null hypothesis” is a single hypothesis, which had been disproved by some experiment. The joke is he doesn’t realize that “the null hypothesis” is a different thing for every experiment.
Eh. I think it’s pretending that there’s only ONE null hypothesis instead of one null hypothesis PER experiment.
Which is what friedo said.
It’s like complaining that the Soup De Jour isn’t the same as the last time you had it.
Okay, so it’s the equivalent of:
“Did you file your income tax yet?”
“Sure, I did that years ago.”
I guess I was just thinking the strip was saying the idea of the null hypothesis was being disproved.
Nope - but that’s exactly what I first thought as well. I googled one of the “explain today’s XKCD” websites. It’s one of the more clever jokes, but is easily misinterpreted when first read. The mouseover really helps this one.
I remember reading a thread that explained xkcd days ago!