![[0538] Butterfly vs. Statistics](/comics/2013-12-19-0538-butterfly-vs-statistics.png "[0538] Butterfly vs. Statistics")
I have a little riddle for you: How high do you think is the rock/boulder/hill/mountain in the center of this photo? Give your guess in the comment section. I will post the answer next week.
- Lily: Isn’t climbing such routes incredibly dangerous?
- Woo: Yes, it is. That’s why most climbers just climb short routes close to the ground.
- Woo: The very best climbers like Butterfly usually work with an eagle that catches them when they fall.
- Lily: Cool.
- Woo: However, about every twentieth time, the eagle is so overwhelmed by his lust for hunting that he forgets everything around him. He brings the climber to his nest and devours him.
- Raccoon: Uhm, that’s not the way to… Uh-oh.
- Butterfly: I’ve fallen nineteen times so far, Vasco. Nineteen times!!
- Vasco: Statistics don’t work like that!
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Bad gambler everywhere will nod in tears that
statistics indeed don’t work that way.
(“But THIS try may be the jackpot”)
my answer on the riddle:
I say it’s something like three meters and it is mostly the perspective making it hard to tell.
So, why don’t they just feed the eagle as part of the deal?
Vasco: *whistles* Hey, down here! That’s it, drop her there! You were doing great! Just stay focused and you’ll have this nailed! Anyway, have a BLT – left by a hiker a few days ago – almost fresh! And someone get the eagle some more snack-voles!
Eagle: Please! She’s actually pretty good at this and I was was getting hungry up there waiting for her to fall. ^V^
@ Greenwood Goat:
Only problem with that if they are a very good climber, who doesn’t fall much, then the Eagle will have to remain up in the sky for long periods of time in case that they do. This would probably lead to the eagle succumbing to their instincts and eating the climber. But if there was a way that we could use like an eagle shift system which gives the first eagle time to hunt while the other covers for it… Then maybe that could work! 🙂
Well, statistics sure don’t work like that.
……….
But Murphy’s Law does.
For people who don’t know what Murphy’s Law is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy's_law
Here’s the short version: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
Also regarding the Eagles. Now I understand why Woo don’t get eaten in the arc where Woo taken by the Eagle. But why? He’s not falling from a cliff and Woo never negotiate with an Eagle to fly him somewhere. Is this a way to plug the plot hole in that arc?
Given that it’s a riddle and it looks small compared to the tree, I’d say pretty tall? Maybe a couple hundred meters? I say 200 m.
But I get way off when guessing length and height sometimes…
I kinda figured that the eagle that Woo was picked up by just didn’t want to eat something with such bad manners. I mean, how would you like it if your lettuce just repeatedly insulted you while you ate? I mean, I probably wouldn’t eat it. But then again, some might.
That was a horrible analogy, so ignore it, and let’s just say the that eagle probably wasn’t particularly starving and had the luxury of letting a raccoon or two go. I don’t really know, but I never really viewed it as a plot hole. Who knows, though, maybe this will be that same eagle.
My guess is going to be 5 meters, even though I know it probably wouldn’t be a riddle if that were the answer. I just don’t have any way to tell other than to assume the little rocks below really are the size I think little rocks usually are…
My answer to the riddle is about 8 meters, going off of the rocks at the bottom.
I think that ‘mountain’ is only about 40-50 feet, judging by the scree and the foreground tree. Also, lighting looks too ‘close’ for it to be much larger.
@ AckAckAck:
Actually, that’s a misquote. What was really said was “@ AckAckAck:
Actually, that’s a misquote. What was really said was “If there’s more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then somebody will do it that way”.
…….ah……who’s bright idea was it to even TRUST a top lethal predator with your life…in the first place…? That’s like…giving a dog a bone and hoping you’ll find it completely slobber free when you
Got back…•__•
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Reading this comic really makes me want to get back into climbing again…
Gotta lose some weight first, though 🙁
To back up @Paradox
Murphy’s law refer to the fact that at least one person out there is JUST THAT stupid. So when you design things, you don’t leave in place stuff that allow people to blow things up.
Or:
“There is a red button to start a fire in the heater. To prevent burns to the user, make it so it can only be used if the flame cover’s closed”
The oft-misquoted “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong” is actually Fingle’s law. It is more an act of god than a note on design.
Or:
“There is a red button to start a fire in the… Larisa’s nearby.”
“God help us all.”
@ AckAckAck:
Yes, but that can’t possibly apply to a single person, it has to apply to a very large group because the things that could go wrong daily include: falling down stairs, tripping over nothing, locking yourself out your house, locking yourself out your car, forgetting to lock the house, forgetting to buy something you needed, falling up the stairs, elevators getting stuck, and all sorts of little things that are annoying, but do not occur to you daily despite the fact they can go wrong.
Plus, there are also things that cannot happen to a single person in one life, you can’t be electrocuted to death, fall in a river and then drown to death if you already died from the electrocution.
If something can go wrong, it will eventually, but that doesn’t mean it is going to happen to you.
yeah that thing in the pick, is a full fledged mountain for sure, and i dont have much to go on height wise for mountains soooo really REALLY tall like so tall that you wouldn’t be able to at all notice any sort of climber on it at this distance because they’d be probably about as small as an ant on a redwood tree at 30 feet
My answer to the riddle: Either much taller or much shorter than it looks.
In favor of tall:
I don’t know how tall cliffs are, but the perspective seems to be hiding the fact that it is just that: a cliff. And cliffs are tall.
The rock off to the right looks suspiciously like a mountain (by the scale/appearance, not shape), so that could be a clue.
The “gravel” at the bottom is is too irregular to be the small gravel it appears to be, and does look like it could be the result of explosives/mining. Perpaps it’s a quarry. Actually, that might be an accurate size guess: quarry-sized
In favor of small:
The rock on the left appears to have some writing (carved?) on it, and huge rocks don’t usually get that.
I’d estimate 200 feet or so. Yeah, I’ve been in mountainous country a bit.
I think the thing that looks like a tree is about 2 inches tall. The”rocks” in the image don’t get smaller with distance, impling the “mountain” is close to it. So I suspect the “mountain” is about 3 inches high based on my guess as to the height of the “tree”.
Well, I have to say I’m quite confident that the ‘rock’ isn’t ‘small’ by any means. While you could use camera trickery to make it look bigger, unless there is photoshop involved, I’m confident that we’re looking at something at least several feet tall. The smaller rocks around it also suggest that we’re not looking at a mountain on the scale of a thousand yards or anything like that. I’d guess… around 150-200 feet tall… maybe 300 feet. Though maybe that should be yards, keep going back and forth, but I suppose if you want a final number to pin me down to, I’d go with 200 feet. It’s at a size where even if I had perspective on it I think I’d have trouble pinning down an exact height. A fun exercise in perspective however big it turns out to be though 🙂
To answer the riddle, I think it’s probably only a couple of inches tall. Close up shot of a tiny, well made diagram.
Greenwood Goat wrote:
I think that’s exactly what they do. The problem is that the eagle sometimes is overwhelmed by it’s instincts and forgets that it will get more food by bringing the Racoon down instead of eating it.
For the riddle:
I was recently in California and climbed a rock face sort of like that one. I’ll take my guess at 1000 ft. which is the same height as what I climbed.
For the picture riddle, I’m thinking about 300 feet, based on the sunlight cresting over the top, the scree around the face of it vs. that in the foreground, and my personal feel from my travel abroad about how a rock like this would erode.
My guess is 20m above ground.
The rock in said question is probably a 6 miles high.
My guess is 25 feet.
FUTURE PREDICTION: Butterfly will fall, the eagle will catch her and attempt to carry her off, Woo and Lily will attempt to save her, and maybe Vasco will get fired.
As for that picture, I’m not good at judging heights, but I am just going to guess that it is much larger than it appears. My mind is thinking a few thousand feet at least.
my guess to the riddle it is over 20m high
That’s, what, something like 20 feet?
I rather like the number, so I will guess about 88 meters!
I’d guess 200m to 300m, but it is a mountain and mountain are notorious for their deceptiveness in this area.
I’d say about 4 meters
For the riddle, my guess is 45 meters.
There are two specks just to the right of the foot of it that could be people. Guesstimating by the size of those specks, I’m going to say 400 feet.
I would guess 500 feet high.
From the tip to the lowest visible part, i’d guess 22.5m.
PS: as this is my first comment, I’d like to thank you two for the wonderfull comics so far!
The rock/boulder/hill/mountain in question is 12 to 16 feet tall, no more than 20 ft tall (I think); but out west (U.S.) sometimes it’s very hard to tell. However, I do think that you are trying to make a “mountain out of a mole hill”, you sly dog!!!
The mountain/cliff/hill thing:
You asked how high it is, but as i have no way of estimating latitude, ima try for how ‘tall’ it is from the rocky base to the tippy top. On my (limited) experience, ima say those rocks are about 20 cm in length, which would make that big slice of stone 15~18 m tall from base to peak. (that’s 50~60 ft)
In retrospect though, I think you’d only post this if it was much taller than that.
The rock is 17 inches tall… that is all.
I thinks its 532m high
Statistics don’t work that way, but Eagles do, unless he or she manages to snag a juicy hare before the climb and is flying without being hungry.
As to the rock, I am going to guess, from what we can see, and assuming there isn’t an optical illusion happening because of the foreshortening with the pine, About 300 feet
I’m saying 63 feet
Lol if that coon actually made it and waved at Butterfly when she got up there.
As to the hill riddle: higher than the surrounding terrain.
Numerically we have a tree in the foreground meaning soil and roots and it looks scaleable from the sides so I’ll say 5 meters.
The Statistics says you are wrong Vasco
I would guess by the stream off to the right that the rock is about 800 feet tall. It is hard to say because there isn’t much frame of reference. This could be a case of forced perspective with the tree in the foreground. You can’t tell exactly where the tree is in reference to the rock. I did try running it through Photoshop to brighten it up and clean the image up a bit, I must admit.
Based on the shrub on the ground, I’m guessing about 2 feet.
I’m also guessing the camera is about one foot off the ground, at the height of a raccoon standing upright.
A golden eagle or bald eagle wouldn’t have any problen catching a racoon mid fall. They would have problems trying to catch a trumpeter swan or mute swan in mid-flight since both are much larger, stronger, and way more agressive than an eagle. A large male trumpeter or mute swan has an 8 foot wingspan and is easily capable of breaking the legs of an adult man.