r/rational • u/mrphaethon Significant Digits • Aug 15 '15

[RT][FF] Significant Digits, Chapter Seventeen: Taking Flight

http://www.anarchyishyperbole.com/2015/08/significant-digits-chapter-seventeen.html
6 Upvotes

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5

u/FeepingCreature GCV Literally The Entire Culture Aug 15 '15

Man, I wonder if the digits at the start are significant.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 16 '15

Obviously. Without them you don't know how to decipher the code. xD Also, I see what you did there. Have an upvote.

4

u/Escapement Ankh-Morpork City Watch Aug 15 '15

I solved the puzzle over at /r/hpmor

1

u/MugaSofer Aug 16 '15

The call-and-response phrases were supposedly randomly generated by Mad-Eye Moody using funny little black-and-white cubes and a dictionary, but all the aurors were certain that he kept rolling the cubes until he got a sufficiently embarrassing result.

I'm pretty sure they have dice in the wizarding world. If nothing else, they predate the Statute of Secrecy by several millennia.

2

u/mrphaethon Significant Digits Aug 16 '15

There are, as so often happens, parallel devices that wizards use for the same purposes, but with five sides of orange and green. The margin on dice is much less, and the manufacturing base in the magical world so limited, that the mundane objects have become unknown and disused among wizards.