2014-07-29
Explanation
The Joke
The Evil Queen from Snow White asks her Magic Mirror, "Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" The mirror responds "You, my queen!" but then qualifies this with "According to one interpretation, anyway." The mirror goes on to explain that most mirrors would rate attractiveness on a straight numerical scale from 0 to 100, but if you look at "all people in the kingdom," the queen is being "rated by quintile." The mirror argues that if you weight the averages so that people with strong preferences count more, the queen actually benefits from a committed community of "goth/dominatrix/Egyptian/Maleficent fetishists."
The queen asks: "Anyway, my point is the perverts and the root mean square make you the fairest, anymore!" The mirror responds flatly: "The data doesn't speak for itself."
The Humor
The comic takes the fairy tale scenario of the Magic Mirror declaring the queen "the fairest of them all" and reimagines the mirror as a pedantic statistician who has to explain the methodology behind its ranking. Rather than a simple declaration of beauty, the mirror's answer becomes a lesson in how different statistical methods (quintile ranking, weighting by preference intensity, root mean square) can produce different results.
The humor lies in the mirror being honest that the queen is only "the fairest" under a very particular, cherry-picked interpretation of the data that happens to weight niche fetish communities heavily. The queen is essentially not conventionally attractive but has a devoted following of people with very specific tastes (goth/dominatrix aesthetics), and the mirror is using statistical manipulation to tell her what she wants to hear.
References
The comic references the fairy tale of Snow White, specifically the iconic "Mirror, mirror on the wall" scene. Root mean square (RMS) is a statistical measure. The joke also touches on how statistics can be manipulated to support a desired conclusion — a common theme in discussions about data literacy.