Math (was R&D) in the Wizard World

[tex23236]

No: HPFGUIDX 33598

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "ftah3" <ftah3 at y...> wrote:
> Ah, I see the difference between Trelawney's divination and 
> arithmancy.  But it makes me wonder still more at Hermione enjoying 
> it.  It has going for it that it doesn't attempt to pin things down 
> too narrowly, making it seem, on one hand, a bit less wishy-washy; 
> yet it's still incredibly vague, and seems to be to be 
> somewhat...useless.  
> 
> I guess I imagine Hermione enjoying classes with much more basis in 
> concrete & reliable evidence/outcome.  Arithmancy has the concrete, 
> in that you have formula = theoretical outcome.  But 
> reliability...you could just as well toss the dice, and say that if 
> you get snake eyes you will have a terrible accident...sometime, 
> somewhere, maybe.  And it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that 
> would appeal to Hermy.

Arithmancy sounds to me an awful lot like muggle statistics.  I
wonder if the class covers experiment design, sample size, analysis of
variance, etc.? Actually, I'd guess Arithmancy would operate more like
numerology, with certain numbers having magical meaning. ANYway,  
arithmancy might give better odds than having no information on 
some important subject at all.

Tex