2012-11-16
Explanation
In the first panel, a math teacher (Mr. Johnson) is being confronted by an administrator who says "It''s not what it looks like! Every student in your 2pm math class sent me a photograph of you giving all of them the finger!" The second panel, labeled "Earlier...", reveals what actually happened: Mr. Johnson was teaching a class about binary counting on fingers and asked a student, "If each of your five fingers represents a binary digit, how would you represent a four?"
The joke hinges on how binary numbers are represented using fingers. In binary (base-2), the number four is written as 00100. If you assign each finger a binary place value (1, 2, 4, 8, 16 from pinky to thumb, or similar), representing the number four requires extending only the middle finger while keeping all others down. So when Mr. Johnson demonstrated or asked students to show the number four in binary on one hand, it looked exactly like he was flipping everyone off. The students, amused or outraged, all photographed the moment and sent it to the administration.
The votey panel simply shows a large number "4" -- reinforcing the punchline by reminding the viewer of the innocent mathematical answer that caused all the trouble.