Undecidability (was reasoning)

[psychic_serpent <psychic_serpent@yahoo.com>]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Tim Regan <timregan at m...>" 
<timregan at m...> wrote:
> 
> With all this OT chatter of mathematics, it would be great to know 
> what Hermione actually learns in Arithmancy. But sadly, I my think 
> finding out is about as likely as my getting a Hogwart's letter :-(
 
Actually, it's pretty easy to find out what she SHOULD be learning.  
Just Google "Arithmancy" and you'll get a slew of sites explaining 
what this is.  The short answer: numerology, basically, largely to 
do with birthdates and a little with names.  I'm assuming JKR 
doesn't know this, or at least didn't when she first thought of 
making this a subject that sounded vaguely mathematical (since her 
strength is words, not numbers, I'm not a bit surprised about 
this).  The additional irony of Arithmancy being Hermione's favorite 
subject (it's made to sound somewhat complicated, like trigonometry 
or calculus, when it's really just all addition) is that Arithmancy 
is yet another form of divination, which Hermione detests.  

It's also unclear why someone else should teach this instead of 
Trelawney, especially as it takes very little time to grasp the 
basic concept of adding up a person's birthdate or the numerical 
values in the letters of a person's name, which would hardly merit 
this being a separate course one would take for five years.  
Frankly, it is far more difficult to create astrological charts 
using astronomical data.  I'm not surprised Harry and Ron make up 
things on their charts, since there's no evidence given that they do 
anything but snooze through Astronomy class (when it's mentioned at 
all).

If JKR really thinks Arithmancy has anything to do with complex 
calculations, that could explain why just about all of her Flints 
have to do with problems with numbers (such as how many World Cups 
there have been versus the year the first one was played and the 
frequency of the Cup matches, which is a combination Flint between 
GoF and Quidditch Through the Ages).

--Barb, dangerously on-topic for the OT list

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