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So I've been trying to change my daughter's opinion about math. She has always believed that math is boring and nothing but numbers. I believe Pathfinder is the way I can change her mind. So I started giving her word problems.
Shivira is a level 2 ranger. She shoots a goblin with her longbow. She needs to hit armor class 15. Her bonus to hit is +6. What is the number you need to roll on a D20 to hit the goblin? x+6=15 x=9
Shivira rolls a Natural 20 to hit the goblin! What number does she need to roll to confirm the critical? x=9
How many what is the minimum damage Shivira will do on her critical if she is within 30 feet with Point Blank Shot? What is the maximum? 3(1)+1=x
3(8)+1=x Range is 4-25 damage.
She really enjoyed that and didn't even realize she was doing Pre-algebra when I did it.
So help me out. Let's hear some more word problems! Make them as complicated as you like.
What is the average Damage of an intensified,empowered maximized Battering Blast at Casterlevel 20.
This gets into probability. Are you looking for a specific type of math problem?
No, not at all actually. Even if I don't use the math now, I can use it later. Not only am I teaching that math can be fun, I am also teaching her the rules for Pathfinder. She's only played maybe 6 sessions of Pathfinder, so is very new.
Exactly! With as fast as we need to add numbers together, the logic centers in the brain work overtime for sure. Plus the excel spreadsheets created to generate characters and DPR should be capstones for college excel courses.
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Lara is a rogue disguised as a maid in the evil king's castle. She needs to kill the king so that his son may assume the throne and restore law to the land. The king has a +3 to his fortitude save, and the poison Lara has will kill him unless he rolls a save of 17 or higher with his d20. What is the ratio of her chance of success to failure? According to the ratio, should she find a new plan?
Not only is this thread, like the cake, a lie, it is killing my love for Pathfinder.
FHDM, you can always play old World Of Darkness - you only need to count up to ten (difficulties). You even don't have to count the dice - just pick a die and cover one dot on your sheet and repeat until you see no more dots in the row then row, look which dice rolled equal to or above the difficult and then show those dice to storyteller.
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Not only is this thread, like the cake, a lie, it is killing my love for Pathfinder.
Freehold has 30 HP. Every time he headdesks, he loses 1 HP. If he headdesks twice whenever someone mentions Joss Whedon and thrice when someone mentions Facebook, how many times will he have headdesked for Facebook if he is unconscious at his computer after six people mention Joss Whedon's Firefly in a thread?
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Not only is this thread, like the cake, a lie, it is killing my love for Pathfinder.Freehold has 30 HP. Every time he headdesks, he loses 1 HP. If he headdesks twice whenever someone mentions Joss Whedon and thrice when someone mentions Facebook, how many times will he have headdesked for Facebook if he is unconscious at his computer after six people mention Joss Whedon's Firefly in a thread?
Oh, task with a catch!
IF I have six magic suits of armor and three different magic swords how many different ways can I equip my paladin with magic weapon and magic suit of armor?
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Not only is this thread, like the cake, a lie, it is killing my love for Pathfinder.Freehold has 30 HP. Every time he headdesks, he loses 1 HP. If he headdesks twice whenever someone mentions Joss Whedon and thrice when someone mentions Facebook, how many times will he have headdesked for Facebook if he is unconscious at his computer after six people mention Joss Whedon's Firefly in a thread?Oh, task with a catch!
** spoiler omitted **
Well dang, now we need to know his level and hit dice so we can calculate his Constitution and find out how long he has to stabilize before he bleeds out.
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Thaliak, I like yours. I'll clean up the technical but it's a nice because I can play Mathfinder with her and calculate how long fights might last.
FHDM, you can always play old World Of Darkness - you only need to count up to ten (difficulties). You even don't have to count the dice - just pick a die and cover one dot on your sheet and repeat until you see no more dots in the row then row, look which dice rolled equal to or above the difficult and then show those dice to storyteller.
Actually, I loved OWOD. The great storyline(Well..usually great storyline) along with almost non-existent math(You mean I DON'T need to do excessive calculations to find out if I actually HIT something?!?! Shock and Awe!!!) made it palatable. That said, it came with just as much table flipping, just over the Storyteller's girlfriend not having to roll for much depending on what she was wearing that evening...
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I can play Mathfinder with her*groans*
Why the groan? Isn't Mathfinder what the forums do?
Not only is this thread, like the cake, a lie, it is killing my love for Pathfinder.Freehold has 30 HP. Every time he headdesks, he loses 1 HP. If he headdesks twice whenever someone mentions Joss Whedon and thrice when someone mentions Facebook, how many times will he have headdesked for Facebook if he is unconscious at his computer after six people mention Joss Whedon's Firefly in a thread?
Once again, math has it wrong. I do NOT headdesk at the mention of Joss Whedon, and certainly not at the mention of Facebook. I actually just shove small pins in the little Joss Whedon/Mark Zuckerberg voodoo dolls I have...Man, they are covered in needles. How many needles are in this thing...I think I shove in three every time Joss Whedon's name is mentioned and two every time Mark Zuckerberg's name is mentioned....I've had them for about three weeks now, and I think Whedon is mentioned about 3 times a day and Mark Zuckerberg is mentioned maybe once every other day...Is there no way to discover how many needles I've shoved in here?
Thaliak, I like yours. I'll clean up the technical but it's a nice because I can play Mathfinder with her and calculate how long fights might last.
Stop doing what I don't like!!!!!
Do you count the times you mention them?
Do you count the times you mention them?
No, just other people.
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Thaliak, I like yours. I'll clean up the technical but it's a nice because I can play Mathfinder with her and calculate how long fights might last.Stop doing what I don't like!!!!!
Stop not liking what I am doing!!!
Once again, math has it wrong. I do NOT headdesk at the mention of Joss Whedon, and certainly not at the mention of Facebook. I actually just shove small pins in the little Joss Whedon/Mark Zuckerberg voodoo dolls I have...Man, they are covered in needles. How many needles are in this thing...I think I shove in three every time Joss Whedon's name is mentioned and two every time Mark Zuckerberg's name is mentioned....I've had them for about three weeks now, and I think Whedon is mentioned about 3 times a day and Mark Zuckerberg is mentioned maybe once every other day...Is there no way to discover how many needles I've shoved in here?Not only is this thread, like the cake, a lie, it is killing my love for Pathfinder.Freehold has 30 HP. Every time he headdesks, he loses 1 HP. If he headdesks twice whenever someone mentions Joss Whedon and thrice when someone mentions Facebook, how many times will he have headdesked for Facebook if he is unconscious at his computer after six people mention Joss Whedon's Firefly in a thread?
189 Joss Whedon pins and 20(ish) Mark Zuckerberg pins.
IF I have six magic suits of armor and three different magic swords how many different ways can I equip my paladin with magic weapon and magic suit of armor?
This is actually a good problem too. I don't remember what section if falls under but I remember doing problems like this on Khan Academy.
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That doesn't make such puns right.Why the groan? Isn't Mathfinder what the forums do?I can play Mathfinder with her*groans*
Someone can't handle a little punishment.
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[BZOING OUT]
Grim Bucko arises from a quantum ripple in the local reality... with the strange after effect of creating that very same ripple some scant 2 seconds before he emerges from it.
Discordian witchery is at work here !
"Ha ! Longstrider ! Thought a little temporal and axiomatic distorsion would be enough to lose me ? Well: think again !"
[BOOM BOOM BOOM] launches a barrage of quantum wave function collaptronic grenades at the reality deviant.
"Take that, you uncertain gender deviant culprit !"
Grim Bucko looks around him, quickly assessing the causal stability of his environment.
"Paradigmatic Police ! We protect your vital postulates, wether you asked for it or not ! Move along, Omniversal Citizens !"
[BZOING]
Another punch in the local space-time fabric, by which the Grim Bucko slips away from the local grid, rotating away along an N dimensional axis barely conceptuable by 4-D minds.
And all is silent again in the thread.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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A Platonic solid is a three-dimesional shape with the following three properties:
- All the faces are regular polygons (equilateral triangles, squares, etc.)
- All the faces are the same shape.
- All the vertices join together the same number of faces.
The last one is a little mysterious. Let's make 2 pyramids with five equilateral triangular faces, and glue them together along their common pentagon base. Now, that shape would have ten equilateral triangles as faces, so it would meet the first two conditions, but the top and bottom vertices would connect 5 triangles, and the 5 vertices along the edge would only connect 4 triangles. So it would not be a Platonic solid.
Looking at the dice the come in a set (d4, d6, d8, two d10's, d12, d20), which dice are Platonic solids, and which are not? Are the four-sided dice that came with the "Dragon Dice" set Platonic solids? What about a d30?
Holy cow Chris. I had to wrap my brain around this one. d4s and d6s are Platonic solids for sure because all the vertices join the same number of shapes and are triangles or squares. Beyond that, I cannot brain the math hurt no good.
One thing I did not mention is that my daughter is doing 8th grade math. That should give you an idea of what kind of math she has learned so far.
Now, I think using creative methods to help teach mathematics is a good idea. And I can say as someone who has some numeric processing impairments (nothing on the level of a disorder, at least not a severe one, but those parts of my brain, the gears do not turn well), stuff like RPGs have helped me learn some mathematics tricks. RPGs have especially helped me practice arithmetic, which I do not have a natural talent for.
(Although for the life of me I still cannot calculate THAC0.)
BUT
I suggest very much that you try not to be disappointed if your daughter still decides math is yucky or boring--or that she may enjoy it in the contexts of stuff like gaming, but not in doing her homework.
Not everyone's brains process things the same way--some excel at verbal skills, some numeric, some logical, some visual, some dextrous... etc. etc. So some have a better talent for math or other things.
And not everyone enjoys the same things. (For example, I know it's unthinkable, but not everyone enjoys playing RPGs!)
I think it's absolutely awesome you want to help teach your daughter to improve her math skills in a creative way, but what if she just doesn't like math? That should be okay too. (As long as she does her best on her schoolwork of course. :) )
I mean, I have trouble understanding why people find Shakespeare difficult to understand or don't enjoy his plays, but apparently some people are like that. Me, I hate math myself, even though I have found ways that made it more fun or interesting to learn at times, but it's not ever gonna be my cup of tea. Diff'rent strokes to rule the world and so on.
Obviously she's your daughter and you'll ultimately decide what you think is best for it, but that's just my 2 cents.
I'm having more fun with this than I should.
The hill you are standing on is 40 feet tall. The goblins are standing at the bottom of the hill, 30 feet away. If you roll a cannonball at them to go bowling for XP, what is the distance the ball will travel?
Sure. Not sure how much HP an improvised weapons-grade bowling ball has, though.
(Although for the life of me I still cannot calculate THAC0.)
So:
F-Thac0 = 21-L
C-Thac0 = 22 - 2 * ROUNDUP (L/3)
T-Thac0 = 21 - ROUNDUP (L/2)
W-Thac0 = 21 - ROUNDUP (L/3)
Note that I might remembered the progression wrong which voids the formulas. Well, I am 99% sure that I recalled Fighter progression right, at least.
Once again, math has it wrong. I do NOT headdesk at the mention of Joss Whedon, and certainly not at the mention of Facebook. I actually just shove small pins in the little Joss Whedon/Mark Zuckerberg voodoo dolls I have...Man, they are covered in needles. How many needles are in this thing...I think I shove in three every time Joss Whedon's name is mentioned and two every time Mark Zuckerberg's name is mentioned....I've had them for about three weeks now, and I think Whedon is mentioned about 3 times a day and Mark Zuckerberg is mentioned maybe once every other day...Is there no way to discover how many needles I've shoved in here?Not only is this thread, like the cake, a lie, it is killing my love for Pathfinder.Freehold has 30 HP. Every time he headdesks, he loses 1 HP. If he headdesks twice whenever someone mentions Joss Whedon and thrice when someone mentions Facebook, how many times will he have headdesked for Facebook if he is unconscious at his computer after six people mention Joss Whedon's Firefly in a thread?
See FHDM, you can handle the math!
A Platonic solid is a three-dimesional shape with the following three properties:
- All the faces are regular polygons (equilateral triangles, squares, etc.)
- All the faces are the same shape.
- All the vertices join together the same number of faces.
(...)
Looking at the dice the come in a set (d4, d6, d8, two d10's, d12, d20), which dice are Platonic solids, and which are not? Are the four-sided dice that came with the "Dragon Dice" set Platonic solids? What about a d30?
Now, I think using creative methods to help teach mathematics is a good idea. And I can say as someone who has some numeric processing impairments (nothing on the level of a disorder, at least not a severe one, but those parts of my brain, the gears do not turn well), stuff like RPGs have helped me learn some mathematics tricks. RPGs have especially helped me practice arithmetic, which I do not have a natural talent for.
I'm not disappointed at all actually, and I don't mind the cautionary criticism either. We adopted her from the DHS system. If you've never heard horror stories about problems that DHS kids have, she's basically like a prisoner who's seeing the outside world for the first time. We're breaking those bad habits that have been instilled in her. One of those bad habits is the thought that school is bad. She doesn't try because she hates being in school. So I'm trying to show her, through a hobby that she really enjoys, that math doesn't have to be boring. What I am trying to separate is the school from the education. Just because you hate school does not mean that learning cannot be interesting. She tells me all the time that she learns more from me when I help her with homework than she does in class. It's because I make learning fun.
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See FHDM, you can handle the math!Once again, math has it wrong. I do NOT headdesk at the mention of Joss Whedon, and certainly not at the mention of Facebook. I actually just shove small pins in the little Joss Whedon/Mark Zuckerberg voodoo dolls I have...Man, they are covered in needles. How many needles are in this thing...I think I shove in three every time Joss Whedon's name is mentioned and two every time Mark Zuckerberg's name is mentioned....I've had them for about three weeks now, and I think Whedon is mentioned about 3 times a day and Mark Zuckerberg is mentioned maybe once every other day...Is there no way to discover how many needles I've shoved in here?Not only is this thread, like the cake, a lie, it is killing my love for Pathfinder.Freehold has 30 HP. Every time he headdesks, he loses 1 HP. If he headdesks twice whenever someone mentions Joss Whedon and thrice when someone mentions Facebook, how many times will he have headdesked for Facebook if he is unconscious at his computer after six people mention Joss Whedon's Firefly in a thread?
This is my biggest problem with math. Just because I well and truly hate math and think the world would be better off without it doesn't mean I can't do it when forced to. And the way I get answers is probably different from the way the teacher wants, it's why I did poorly on so many tests. And most of the math I was forced to sit through lacked practical applications- I don't need to till/hoe/work a field, so when will I ever NEED this crap anyway? I'm proud to say that I have had to use almost none of this bunk in my day to day life, and I think that appreciation for math as well as overall math scores would rise if the powers that be stepped away from useless arcana and focused on things that were actually useful, like knowing whether or not a sale price is really a sale or someone's just trying to get one over on you. I would also greatly prefer a math book that didn't confound both teacher and student, as one of my best friends and a math teacher only recently solved a problem he had in his Part B Math book for a few years now. AND I would prefer math problems with less misdirection and deceit- I've gotten tired of math teachers getting SO. F*&+ING. SMUG. with "That's not the answer to the question the problem's asking!!!".
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I'm not disappointed at all actually, and I don't mind the cautionary criticism either. We adopted her from the DHS system. If you've never heard horror stories about problems that DHS kids have, she's basically like a prisoner who's seeing the outside world for the first time. We're breaking those bad habits that have been instilled in her. One of those bad habits is the thought that school is bad. She doesn't try because she hates being in school. So I'm trying to show her, through a hobby that she really enjoys, that math doesn't have to be boring. What I am trying to separate is the school from the education. Just because you hate school does not mean that learning cannot be interesting. She tells me all the time that she learns more from me when I help her with homework than she does in class. It's because I make learning fun.Now, I think using creative methods to help teach mathematics is a good idea. And I can say as someone who has some numeric processing impairments (nothing on the level of a disorder, at least not a severe one, but those parts of my brain, the gears do not turn well), stuff like RPGs have helped me learn some mathematics tricks. RPGs have especially helped me practice arithmetic, which I do not have a natural talent for.
That is awesome, and certainly trying to make learning enjoyable I am 100% behind. :) It was hard to tell the motivation from the original post. I would love to contribute but... not my area of expertise. If she ever needs to write a sonnet, let me know. :) (And don't ask me why I can track 5 sets of iambs but not add 2 and 2.)
.
Ask her to calculate the beta of your equity portfolio.
... oh wait.
.
I'm having more fun with this than I should.
The hill you are standing on is 40 feet tall. The goblins are standing at the bottom of the hill, 30 feet away. If you roll a cannonball at them to go bowling for XP, what is the distance the ball will travel?
I don't think 8th graders can do line integrals which you would need to calcuate exactly and we would need a shape to go on the curve Hills are not usually stight and linear. You can calculate the distance from the starting point though.