Does Harry Potter only know fifth grade math?

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

And why goblins have to do their accounting for them.
The series would have ended much sooner if Harry had brought an AK47 to hogwarts
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.
I'm not familiar with the series, what's muggle technology?
- 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.
- Muggle is a racial slur used by magic-able people to refer to magic disabled people.
- Non magical people living in the real world. It's you. You're a muggle.
- Non-magical people's tech. Aka our technology.
could hogwarts defeng itself against modern weapons? like missils and shit?
- 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?!….”

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.

Logically, that does follow, but we're talking about wizards here.
- True, but their methods of learning do not differ significantly from that of muggles. They still need to take classes the same way we do, and this would need to learn maths and logic the same way too.
That's probably why wizards don't run the bank 😂
- ???
  Reading is very common at Hogwarts and the wider wizarding world. Hogwarts has an extensive library, and most of their communications and news media are done over written mediums.
  Contrast that to maths where the hardest thing most wizards would realistically have to do is basic money operations. Made even harder by their bonkers monetary system.
- She successfully brewed a complicated polyjuice potion that took months to make by just reading and following the instructions in the book when she was 12. She reads just fine.

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.

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.
Exactly what more than 5th grade math do you need in such world?
I think a lot of people forget what they learn in 5th grade math. You learn negative numbers. You learn unit conversion, fraction, prime, square roots.
Would more math help absolutely. Especially with the logic wizard seems to lack. But it is not like many people use higher level math today anyway.
- What they lack is knowledge about volume and surface calculation. That is some stuff you definitely need in life. That wizards don't need analysis or Calculus is kinda obvious.
If you haven't already, take a peek at Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It's fanfiction, but absolutely worth a read.
- Oh man I totally forgot about that! Oh nice they have it in ebook and pdf formats now
- Just a warning: this takes pretty much every bad FF trope you can think of and turns it to max. Awful reading.
- To add, the podcast is phenomenal. Definitely worth listening to as well
I think the one exception is their money, you definitely need some basic math to use it.
I have often suspected that that's exactly what it is, there's even clues of a genetic basis. How such a force can somehow be responsive to specific language is hard to imagine but evidently it can.
- There are laws baked into it, just like the formula proposed above. For whatever reason it's not only about intent, there are certain quantities of "stuff" needed. How is it that someone like Snape can map out such a specific spell, if it didn't take some sort of physical dynamics that could be measurable. Spells can't just solely be about intent, otherwise anyone could yell out "Cowabunga" or something and have it do whatever they are thinking. And I know some of the names have intent baked in them, but not all of them. Some are straight up nonsense. This doesn't even get into the fact that the wands are a straight up conduit to magic that are controlled more heavily than guns in most nations. Maybe the wizards just hide all the dragons, Phoenix and unicorns like nation states gaurd WMDs. It would be smart, without them most easy magic would be impossible and stuff would really take elbow grease with potions and whatnot.
That's where arithmancy comes in.

"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.

Divination with maths is statistics.
Jesus Christ this book series is fucking stupid
- 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.
- It's just like an izekai but for English reading children.
- Almost like it was written with kids and preteens as the intended audience ..
- It is but I’m not sure why they called the author a witch instead of a shitty author. For whatever stupid detail you find, the writing is 5x more awkward
  Even a dragon would make more sense because of the wealth hoarding
In the games, arithmancy is portrayed as number puzzles that need to be solved.
- number puzzles that need to be solved.
  In JK Rowling's mind the number puzzles are things like "How many genders are there?"
  The correct answer, of course, is "Fuck you, JK Rowling, that's how many."

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

Facts
Source: self
I bet I couldn't help a 5th grader with their math homework.
- Most people couldn't, but that's mostly to do with the way math is taught differently... ("New math" is better, fight me!)
- can you add fractions?

Who needs math when you have magic?

Who needs magic when we have science?
- Science: Here's why water is wet. Magic: I'm a dragon now.
- Imagine if scientists in-universe studied and quantified magic 🪄
- Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science.
- not to forget scientific alchemistry
Who needs ethics when you have magic?
- Who needs magic when you have drugs?

My wife, who is a big potter fan, told me they take traditional classes as well, but they are shown off screen as they aren't interesting to the story.

Pretty sure they explicitly talk about those kind of classes in the books. They don't have scenes in them, but I remember Ron and Harry complaining about arithmetic, or mathematics, or something like that.
"Arithmancy" is what they call their math disciplines and it's mentioned a fair bit in the books, though understandably never really shown in the movies.
Using OP logic, none of these kids ever go to the bathroom either.
- They do in the Chamber of Secrets.

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.

They literally go through the class schedule in each book. General studies are not in it.
- Can you imagine how absolutely ignorant the average Hogwarts student must be then?
- They literally go through the class schedule in each book
  No they don't?
Boring? This is the same universe where wizards canonically defecated in the streets and used fecal vanishing spells.
However, when Hogwarts’ plumbing became more elaborate in the eighteenth century (this was a rare instance of wizards copying Muggles, because hitherto they simply relieved themselves wherever they stood, and vanished the evidence), the entrance to the Chamber was threatened, being located on the site of a proposed bathroom.
https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/chamber-of-secrets
- Hogwarts was in India all along and we just didn't know it.
- Im surprised that’s so controversial. I would expect wizards to do exactly that if it wasn’t for modern plumbing, I mean, people used to shit in pots and dump it out their window into the street in the morning. Or crap in a cold and smelly hole inside a basic wooden shed out in their yard.
  If you have magic at that point why would you not instead delete it afterwards, considering the alternatives?

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

He broke down his door, mutilated his cousin, threatened his uncle, then lured Harry away with cake (which was eaten by said cousin).

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.

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

arithmancy - which is pseudomaths in a sense....

Most of us only know 5th grade math

You don't have to brag about it. Geez.
- I thought you said Gaetz. He likes 'em at a fifth grade level.

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.

Something like increasing quantites for lake more potions .
They just cast calcularmis.
Around that age kids learn what negative numbers are. I feel like some of it might be important
- According to the British government 5th grade math includes interpret negative numbers in context, count forwards and backwards with positive and negative whole numbers, including through 0.

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

They have arithmancy but Harry never took it AFAIK

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

You don't want to learn avada kepolynomials?

Small promotion for !harrypotter@literature.cafe

Please stop.
JK sees the continued support of her work as proof that her views are supported. She is doing active harm to people lives. I know it's common to say seperate the art from the artist, but that only applies to the dead. Rowling is alive and using her profits to write hateful proganda and restrict healthcare from an already marginalized group. I'm not ever going to tell someone what they can and can't read, just please recognize the harm it does by promoting her. It's the same as promoting the works of David Duke.
Thank you.
- Hello,
  Thank you for your comment. That's one of our main threads, "On the sensitive topic of being a Harry Potter fan while acknowledging JKR's transphobia" https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/9633657, quoting https://www.popsugar.co.uk/entertainment/harry-potter-fans-jk-rowling-transphobia-essay-49214964
  Still, there may be a way to enjoy Harry Potter as a trans person or ally. Over the years, many fans have found creative ways to engage with the series's magic while also acknowledging its creator's bigotry. In her paper "Transformative Readings: Harry Potter Fan Fiction, Trans/Queer Reader Response, and J. K. Rowling," Jennifer Duggan, an associate professor of English at the University of South-Eastern Norway — says that it's possible to interpret the text of Harry Potter itself in ways that would certainly horrify its writer. "My central thesis—one which has also been argued by other academics like Thomas Pugh and David Wallace — is that the Harry Potter novels are deeply queer," she tells POPSUGAR. "I mean this in both senses of the term: they champion nonnormativity through the contrast of the 'perfectly normal' Dursleys and Harry, and they are, at their heart, a story about a boy with an 'abnormality' (as the Dursleys call his magic) who comes out of his cupboard under the stairs and discovers and finds and affinity for a hidden, colourful, queer world. I take this argument further to argue that the novels are easily read through a trans lens, since there is a focus in many of the books on shapeshifting, including several cross-gendered transformations."
  Fandom, she adds, can provide spaces where Harry Potter fans can explore the series's queer undercurrents while celebrating their own sexualities. "From what I have observed, I have concluded that for the most part, the Harry Potter fandom continues to offer queer and trans fans a positive space," she tells POPSUGAR. "The two main trends I have seen in fan works are an 'answer hate with love' reaction, in which fans focus on trans positivity, and so-called 'spitefic,' which are works that are framed as revenge on Rowling for the hurt she has caused. These works are usually trans-positive, too. That said, I fully understand why some fans feel they can no longer engage with the texts in any way."
  Link to the research paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10583-021-09446-9

Wizards don't need math. They can just use magic like a calculator, but cooler.

Okay dude... Because of YOU I started watching Mashle and I'm not even big into anime. I've watched a few and like some occasionally..

Mashle is awesome. Damn/thank you.

That makes me glad I included that with the post

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.
- I think everyone hated alchemy not because of Snape alone, but because it involves math too. Scaling the resulting doze of a potion, balancing it's effects, predicting chemi-magical reactions of ingredients - it's all math. And Severus was portrayed just like an average techie teaching a class of humame arts students.

I don't remember where the books said it, but I remember them saying that they go to school before hogwarts the way that we go to school there just isn't magic. Harry and Hermoine talked about going to school.

I would trade maths knowledge for actual magic every single time. Maths basically was invented because of money & land, and that’s basically irrelevant with magic. Don’t need acres of land if you can have multiple wildlife reservations inside of a suitcase.

It’s honestly one of the best things about Harry Potter series: it leaves as much muggle crap out of it as possible.

Maths is the language of the universe. Show some god damned respect.
- The universe has its language, and maths are the captions we can read not the true language. So no, you have some respect.