Comments on: Dungeons, Dragons, and Brain Science

By: Megan M.

Megan M. — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 23:47:11 +0000

Huh. I just realized how possible that is, especially considering the What-Ifs post. You have the gears in my brain turning, now.

By: Megan M.

Megan M. — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:47:11 +0000

Huh. I just realized how possible that is, especially considering the What-Ifs post. You have the gears in my brain turning, now.

By: sst

sst — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:34:21 +0000

hee hee a good read about Math-English I truly enjoyed the reference to D&D and I always go more into the “roll play” and was truly saddened if my character would die. Now back to this “I dislike and cannot stomach reading someone else’s writing about math”. Maybe it is a control thing :-)
enjoyed

By: jeremymeyers

jeremymeyers — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:23:36 +0000

I would read a book about applying storytelling to address business challenges and personal finance.

I think you should write it, and I'll buy it.

By: Megan M.

Megan M. — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:17:19 +0000

I was always very shallowly involved in D&D. I would go and roll dice and kill things and howl in victory, and I would add my bonuses and things with wild gleeful abandon. But when it came to figuring out how the character was built, I just meh'd on it. Just had no appeal at all. If I could separate the math parts and the story parts, I had a ton of fun. :D

Do you have to build a character using math stuff with 4e D&D? I wonder if Marty knows about this.

I think you're right about word problems. I probably will never have to solve that kind of word problem again, ha!

....BUT WEIRDLY… it just occurred to me that I must solve all kinds of word problems all the time, without thinking about it. Anything I do with math is inevitably SOME KIND of word problem. Huh.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:09:22 +0000

Word problems are usually so artificially structured that they get confusing. First you have to apply meta-thinking to parse the Word Problem before you can break it down into the real problem.

I think it is to get around people not knowing enough math to do the whole thing. More advance math classes have more naturally structured problems.

Oh, 4e DnD has different math. It is easier to ignore if you want to – but you can be helpful to the DM if you want to (and if they can take the help).