- cross-posted to:
- comicstrips@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- comicstrips@lemmy.world
xkcd #3202: Groundhog Day Meaning
Title text:
Originally, the ceremony used a variety of rodents and mustelids, but over time most people agreed it made sense to standardize on a specific individual ground squirrel in Pennsylvania.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3202/


You gotta have some standards. If you use a different rodent every year, you can’t realistically compare the results with one another. Who knows how wildly the measurement error varies from species to species?
I mean, the one thing the comic gets wrong is that we never really settled on a standard, there are like 36 different regional rodents that are used., my favourite being Wiarton Willie:
Oh wow! That’s amazing.
Americans will use any unit besides the metric system /s
Groundhog (Gr), a unit of uncertainty in weather predictions. The value of 1 Gr means the prediction is as good as pulling it out of a hat.