Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

A professor is lecturing about graph theory, explaining that "we have a graph which embodies a stochastic process" and that they will "perform a drunk walk on the graph for n steps." But when the professor says "and HEY!" -- the graph on the chalkboard has literally come to life and wandered off. In the next panel, the professor exclaims, "The graph went out for McNuggets!" and we see the graph (depicted as a stick figure made of nodes and edges) drunkenly stumbling around with a box of chicken nuggets, slurring "Nuggs nuggs nuggie nugge nugg WOOH!" and flirting, "God you're so hot."

The comic takes the mathematical concept of a "random walk" (also called a "drunkard's walk") on a graph and makes it absurdly literal. Instead of a random walk being an abstract mathematical process where you traverse nodes by randomly choosing edges, the graph itself gets drunk and physically wanders away from the lecture.

The Humor

The joke is a classic Weinersmith move of taking technical mathematical language and interpreting it with cartoonish literalism. The term "drunk walk" (a colloquial name for a random walk) practically begs for this treatment, and the image of a sentient graph stumbling around with fast food, yelling about chicken nuggets, is delightfully absurd. The professor's exasperated "DAMMIT!" suggests this is not the first time this has happened, adding another layer of comedy. There is also a subtle joke for math enthusiasts in the fact that the "McNugget" reference might nod to the Frobenius/coin problem, sometimes called the "Chicken McNugget theorem," which is itself a problem in combinatorics.