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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 3209141" data-attributes="member: 19675">A glossary defines the term- how it is used in language.  The rest of the book tells you the mechanical aspects of it- how the defined term's details are used as a practical matter.If I look in my Accounting & Finance books, the glossary will tell me what a term is.  However, the chapters within the book tell me the mathematical realities of how to use the term that was defined in the glossary.Example:  I go into the glossary of Horngren Sundem & Elliot's Introduction to Financial Accounting and look up "pretax operating rate of return on total assets (return on total assets (ROA))" in the glossary, it is defined as "operating income divided by sales."However, despite being a definition, that doesn't help me calculate anything from incomplete data...something I can do if I look on p 573 and find the ratios "operating income percentage on sales" and "total asset turnover."IOW, the glossary tells me how a particular FA term is defined, the book tells me how to calculate it from raw data.Or consider "sigma."  It has some very different definitions- the 18th greek letter, the ancient greek symbol for 200, or a symbol for standard deviation (and about 8 other uses in science).  In a book on learning Greek, you'd go with the former definition and then look elsewhere to figure out how its pronounced or if there are any special rules for its use (Like, hypothetically, "Sigma after Theta, except after Pi") and how to distinguish it from its use as a letter from its use as a number. In a book on math or stats, you'd go with the latter definition, then look to other text within the book on how to calculate sigma.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma_(letter" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma_(letter</a>)Likewise, the PHB glossary tells me what an Unarmed Strike is (the language of it)- "a successful blow"- and the equipment section tells me what an unarmed strike does within the mechanics of the game system- how many d6, whether its lethal or not, etc. (the "math" of it).</blockquote>

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