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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Should magic be "mystical," unknowable, etc.? [Pick 2, no takebacks!]
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<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8543581" data-attributes="member: 6779196"><p>Well, when you square a number, you multiply it by itself. Taking the square root of a number is finding out what number you can multiply by itself to get the number you’re finding the root of. And, yeah, you can use the geometry analogy to work that out, which is where the term “square” comes from. The area of a square with sides of length X is X^2, or “X squared.” Taking the square root is simply doing the reverse. You know the area of the square and you need to find the length of its sides. That’s something I can grasp, it’s basically algebra.</p><p></p><p>Like I say above, what you’re doing (or what I’m doing, at least) when taking a square root is algebra. I have a known variable and an unknown variable and I understand the relationship between the two: the known variable is the product of the unknown variable multiplied by itself, solve for the unknown variable.</p><p></p><p>Yeah, but in the case of the “find the square root machine,” I understand what it’s finding and how. The relationship between the input and the output is clear to me, so I’m comfortable letting the machine do that work for me, and the output it gives me is meaningful to me. I understand what happened to the input to turn it into the output. In the case of the Sine, Cosine, and Tangent machines, the relationships between the input and the output were never clear to me, so the output was just a contextless, meaningless number. The calculator did some magic to the numbers I fed it and transmuted them into the numbers that made me pass the class. I could do it, but the lack of meaning made my ADHD brain decide it wasn’t worth caring about.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 8543581, member: 6779196"] Well, when you square a number, you multiply it by itself. Taking the square root of a number is finding out what number you can multiply by itself to get the number you’re finding the root of. And, yeah, you can use the geometry analogy to work that out, which is where the term “square” comes from. The area of a square with sides of length X is X^2, or “X squared.” Taking the square root is simply doing the reverse. You know the area of the square and you need to find the length of its sides. That’s something I can grasp, it’s basically algebra. Like I say above, what you’re doing (or what I’m doing, at least) when taking a square root is algebra. I have a known variable and an unknown variable and I understand the relationship between the two: the known variable is the product of the unknown variable multiplied by itself, solve for the unknown variable. Yeah, but in the case of the “find the square root machine,” I understand what it’s finding and how. The relationship between the input and the output is clear to me, so I’m comfortable letting the machine do that work for me, and the output it gives me is meaningful to me. I understand what happened to the input to turn it into the output. In the case of the Sine, Cosine, and Tangent machines, the relationships between the input and the output were never clear to me, so the output was just a contextless, meaningless number. The calculator did some magic to the numbers I fed it and transmuted them into the numbers that made me pass the class. I could do it, but the lack of meaning made my ADHD brain decide it wasn’t worth caring about. [/QUOTE]
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General Tabletop Discussion
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Should magic be "mystical," unknowable, etc.? [Pick 2, no takebacks!]
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