2014-07-29

An eight-panel comic. A queen in a crown and red robe stands before a magic mirror, whose face appears as a green-skinned figure within the mirror frame. The queen asks, "Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" The mirror replies, "You, my queen! According to one interpretation anyway." It explains that most mirrors would just take a straight average of everyone's preference ratings on a 0-to-100 scale, under which she's "barely top quintile." But, it says, if you weight the average so people with strong preferences count more, she benefits from "the surprisingly large community of septuagenarian fetishists." The queen says, "I'm 61." The mirror responds, "Hey, work what you got." Its point: "perverts and the root mean square make you the fairest anywhere!" Final panel, the smiling mirror declares, "The data doesn't speak for itself!" Votey: a handwritten note titled "Things I can't draw," listing cats, cars, buildings, and ellipses.