Convincing
Convincing
[Cueball and Megan are talking. Megan has a board.] Cueball: I think we should give it another shot. Megan: We should break up, and I can prove it.
[The second panel is the graph. A series of points moves steadily downward.] Our Relationship.
[Cueball looks at the graph.] Cueball: Huh.
Cueball: Maybe you're right. Megan: I knew data would convince you. Cueball: No, I just think I can do better than someone who doesn't label her axes.

This comic is a typical xkcd compilation. Relationships , math , graphs and of course, the twist. At 523: Decline Cueball's fascination with graphs seems to have retaliated against him. Cueball wants to get back together with Megan , but she declines and shows him a graph showing why. She thinks that the downward trend of the graph will convince him that their relationship is also in decline. But, Cueball takes that as this is a woman who does not follow proper protocol, since she does not label the axes (plural for axis) on her graph. We do not even know the unit of measure on the graph, let alone what each axis corresponds to. For all we know, the horizontal axis could be labeled "Time" and the vertical axis could be labeled "Crappiness of Relationship" or "Unawesomeness of Relationship". In that case, a downward trend would be a positive thing.
In the twist, Cueball sees that he can do better than this woman and switches his position and decides he is going to break up with her.
Cueball has already broken up with people over graphs before (see 539: Boyfriend ). Ironically, he or a different Cueball gave a similar graph with vaguely-labelled axes in 523: Decline .
The title text points out the irony that if the axes had been labelled, then Cueball would be able to use it to determine exactly how much better a relationship he could get, since he could read how crappy the present one is. Yet he would lose the twist at the end, so that the graph data would have to convince him and not the lack of labels.
"Someone who doesn't label her axes" sounds like an inversion of "someone who labels her exes", which is an accusation sometimes levelled in break-up situations.
[Cueball and Megan are talking. Megan has a board.] Cueball: I think we should give it another shot. Megan: We should break up, and I can prove it.
[The second panel is the graph. A series of points moves steadily downward.] Our Relationship.
[Cueball looks at the graph.] Cueball: Huh.
Cueball: Maybe you're right. Megan: I knew data would convince you. Cueball: No, I just think I can do better than someone who doesn't label her axes.
