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submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by CorrodedCranium@leminal.space to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

He was abducted by Hagrid when he turned 11 so that would place him maybe around the fifth or sixth grade.

I don't know if canonically there are math classes at Hogwarts.


The thought came to while I was watching the anime Mashle. If you are into Harry Potter and One-Punch Man I'd recommend giving it a watch.


Someone mentioned this community below; I wanted to highlight it.

Small promotion for !harrypotter@literature.cafe

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[-] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 53 points 9 months ago

I mean, there must be a reason why wizards are constantly perplexed by muggle technology.

[-] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 33 points 9 months ago

And why goblins have to do their accounting for them.

[-] AFC1886VCC@reddthat.com 9 points 9 months ago

The series would have ended much sooner if Harry had brought an AK47 to hogwarts

[-] T156@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Although that could also be them being perplexed by the fact that muggles did it with no magic at all.

Imagine us discovering a species that developed computers and tech just like ours, but using neither transistors nor electricity.

[-] someguy3@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

I'm not familiar with the series, what's muggle technology?

[-] reddig33@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Muggles is wizard slang for non-magical human beings. Like Darren on Bewitched would be a muggle. He cooks his food using an oven instead of magic. The oven is muggle tech.

[-] shalafi@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

Non magical people living in the real world. It's you. You're a muggle.

[-] MajorMajormajormajor@lemmy.ca 4 points 9 months ago

Non-magical people's tech. Aka our technology.

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[-] Vilian@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago

could hogwarts defeng itself against modern weapons? like missils and shit?

[-] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

Yeah. Easily.

Reducto or any of a dozen other spells that make shit explode, magical barriers, simply transfiguring the weapons to something else… telekinesis. Simply not being there.

And before you add “what if they were surprised…” …. It’s possible, but remember how shocked Hagrid was about the lie the Dursley’s told Potter? “A car crash?! A Car CRASH?! Kill lily and James potter?!….”

[-] SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago

I don’t know. I’ve always thought a sniper could have taken out Voldemort. Far away, camouflaged, and the bullet gets there faster than the sound. It’s a reaction time thing.

[-] Azzu@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Obviously, JK Rowling was not a tactical mastermind.

However in the universe she created, any powerful wizard worth a damn would simply keep protective shields up all the time, especially against such simple things like "fast objects hitting them".

Protego seems to be doing a lot with barely any effort to cast. Fred&George even create permanently enchanted clothing with Protego on it.

[-] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

I would expect Voldemort to have protective spells keeping things like that from happening.

If it were that easy to kill a witch or wizzard... then there's lots of ways to go about that. He wouldn't have needed a special wand to fight Harry. he'd just fling a ginormous rock out of nowhere.

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[-] beefcat@lemmy.world 22 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

"Arithmancy" is their name for math classes and is mentioned several times throughout the books. It is one of Hermione's favorite subjects.

At one point, the real world evil witch that is JK Rowling suggested that Arithmancy is like dviniation, but with math, saying they use numbers to predict the future. I take this to mean that the wizarding community discovered calculus independently from the rest of the world and mistook it for a new form of magic.

[-] master5o1@lemmy.nz 14 points 9 months ago

Divination with maths is statistics.

[-] nutsack@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago

Jesus Christ this book series is fucking stupid

[-] Venator@lemmy.nz 6 points 9 months ago

It's just like an izekai but for English reading children.

[-] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Isekai is nothing new. Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe are all "isekai". JK is just a special kind of bad writer.

[-] Telodzrum@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

It's just fun, it's not serious or hard fantasy. It could be much worse, a lot of people read Ayn Rand and think its good.

[-] Crack0n7uesday@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

Almost like it was written with kids and preteens as the intended audience ..

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[-] rifugee@lemmy.world 18 points 9 months ago

To be fair, I suspect the average adult in real life probably only remembers, and uses, 5th grade math.

[-] ULS@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Facts

Source: self

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[-] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 16 points 9 months ago

I'm sure Hogwarts also covered general education stuff but that would be boring to us so they focused on the magic stuff. That's my theory though.

[-] chaogomu@kbin.social 12 points 9 months ago

They literally go through the class schedule in each book. General studies are not in it.

[-] Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 months ago

Can you imagine how absolutely ignorant the average Hogwarts student must be then?

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[-] AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I mean, the very existence of magic kind of nullifies the concept of math as a means to ascertain objective fact.

What good is 2+2 when 2 eyes of newt plus 2 legs of frog leads to random quantities of dancing forks with literally no respect as to the how because magic?

Math can't quantify a world where physical laws are replaced by literal nonsense, and if math could ultimately explain the mechanics of magic and predict the outcomes of its applications, the magic wouldn't be magic anymore, it would just be another great force of the universe like gravity or electromagnetism to be mapped by the scientific community.

[-] urist@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 9 months ago

I always wondered the opposite of the harry potter universe.

So much of math was difficult to teach or obscure because of difficulties in visualization or computation. Surely there would have been at least one wizard over hundreds of years that could figure out how to use the powers of illusion magic to visualize things? To demonstrate integrals to the unfamiliar? To render a fractal like a julia set?

Even if magic iteslf followed little internal logic, it could be used as a tool, surely? But that's the sort of fridge logic (warning tv tropes link) that maybe didn't belong in a story book like Harry Potter. I had to stop reading anyway around the time house elves were introduced, anyway. I took issue with that stuff even when I was a kid.

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[-] UnPassive@lemmy.world 13 points 9 months ago

Most of us only know 5th grade math

[-] ShepherdPie@midwest.social 9 points 9 months ago

You don't have to brag about it. Geez.

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[-] 520@kbin.social 9 points 9 months ago

Hermione mentioned in the first book that wizards tend to absolutely suck at things that are typically Muggle, like logic, so it follows that they probably suck at math too.

[-] Sotuanduso@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago

Logically, that does follow, but we're talking about wizards here.

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[-] Isakk86@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

YEAH! Where's the book where he just does algebra and other boring shit for 300 pages.

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[-] WastedJobe@feddit.de 7 points 9 months ago

Isn't arithmetic a class in Hogwarts and just a fancy word for maths (not a native speaker)? I think only Hermione takes it though and it's only mentioned in the books.

[-] A_A@lemmy.world 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

~~arithmetic~~ arithmancy
source :
Arithmancy | Harry Potter Wiki
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Arithmancy

[-] orangeNgreen@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

I’m just over here chuckling at your casual statement that Hagrid abducted Harry.

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[-] piecar@lemm.ee 5 points 9 months ago

I think you're right. They probably don't know math. I mean, what would they need it for? They probably don't have to follow the laws of physics for the most part. If math is done it's probably 100% recreational.

[-] topinambour_rex@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

Something like increasing quantites for lake more potions .

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[-] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 9 months ago
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[-] morphballganon@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

So that would put him only a couple years ahead of most republicans

They have arithmancy but Harry never took it AFAIK

[-] wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago

lol. I don’t remember a single math, English or any other class mentioned.

[-] chaogomu@kbin.social 5 points 9 months ago

There was Arithmancy, the Harry Potter wiki says that it was using numbers to predict the future. It was an elective and Harry didn't take it.

The only other class that would have had math would be Astronomy, which was a required class for all students. The students are required to make star charts and such... Seems like rote memorization was the only thing taught. The wink says that the end of year 5 tests was filling in a blank star chart from memory.

They might get some English pointers in the dozens of essays they wrote, but since essays are graded on the length of the scroll... it becomes questionable.

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this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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