math
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Make 10: A Journey to Europe
Tashiten: Tashite 10 Ni Suru Monogatari recently appeared on the OFLC's ratings database in Australia, and has now been officially announced in ... Europe (a.k.a. Land of the Training Game), where it will be released as Make 10: A Journey of Numbers.That title is something of a misnomer, for the game is really only about one number. In over 30 different minigames, players have to add or subtract numbers to make ten, all while being guided through the "Make 10 Kingdom" by a pixie called "Num Diddly." They'll crowbar a story into anything nowadays, we suppose. Still, it's refreshing to see a Nintendo-published non-game abandon the austere presentation of Brain Training/Math Training, and opt for something more colorful.Whereas Make 10 launched on the tenth day of the tenth month last year in Japan, the European version has a thoroughly unfunny release date: September 26th. If we can no longer find humor in release schedules, what else is there?[Via press release]
Nintendo planning to Make 10 in Australia
It looks like the latest of Nintendo's training games to get localized will be Tashiten: Tashite 10 Ni Suru Monogatari, a Nintendo-published math training/adventure game about adding up to 10 in various, clever ways. A game called Make 10: A Journey of Numbers, developed by Tashiten developers Muu Muu, is now listed on Australia's OFLC ratings database.If past training games are any indication, we can expect to see Make 10 in both Europe and Australia, where it will be a high-profile release -- but not high-profile enough for Nintendo of America to care. After the break, we've embedded a short, adorable commercial.
M4Girls pilot project uses Nokia 6300 handsets to teach math
Considering that some countries are mulling the idea of making texting a recognized subject and allowing students to use text-speak on exams, we suppose it's not too outrageous to hear of handsets being used as educational tools and not seen as a hindrance. Nokia has teamed up with Mindset Network in order to spearhead the M4Girls pilot project, which utilizes Nokia 6300 handsets loaded with educational material to "help improve the mathematics performance of Grade 10 girl learners." Reportedly, the initiative will be piloted in two South African schools, and students lucky enough to take advantage will have access to educational games and other material created to meet the needs of the national curriculum. No word on whether the program will filter out to other locations if it proves successful, but here's to hoping that eventually gets answered with a resounding "yes."[Via textually]
Some remarks on drop rates
I'm going to keep this relatively short, because a full discussion of probability could fill several college semesters. However, there is one misconception that some WoW players have that has been bugging me lately. Let's say you read that Shattered Sun Supplies have a 10% chance to contain a Badge of Justice, and, excited, you go out and do enough dailies get 10 Shattered Sun Supplies. You open them all and find not a single Badge, or you find five badges. Do either of these outcomes mean the 10% drop rate is wrong? No! They do not! All a 10% drop rate means is that for each Supplies, there is a 10% chance that it contains a Badge. Random events have no memory, so no matter how many badges you get in the first nine Supplies, your chance to get a Badge in the tenth Supplies is still 10%. The traditional analogy is that if you flip a coin nine times and get heads each time, the chance of getting heads on the next flip is still 50%. Now it is true that you will probably get a Badge in ten Supplies if the drop rate is 10%. If you're interested in how likely it is, here's the calculation to do. The chance of not getting a Badge in one Supplies is (100% - 10%) = 90%, or 0.9. Raise that to the tenth power, for your ten independent Supplies-opening events, and you get the chance of, ten times out of ten, not getting a Badge: 0.9^10 = 0.349, about 35%. So in fact, out of ten Supplies, you will get a badge (100% - 35%) = 65% of the time, about two thirds. TL;DR version: A drop rate is a probability, not a guarantee.
Math geeks can get their fix through the DS
No longer must you resort to watching the copy of Revenge of the Nerds you have sitting on your iPod or running out to the backseat of your car to fondle your old Apple II while on break at work. Now, you can get a good helping of geek by booting up your DS!The significant bit of news here seems to be that someone has made it possible to run a computer algebra system on the DS, allowing the user to perform calculus on polynomials and solve and simplify equations. We won't lie, our absolute worst subject back in school was math, but luckily our post-school report card has high marks in searching on Wikipedia. The application that makes this all possible is called Mathomatic.Mathomatic itself has been available for quite some time now, however we've just gotten hip to the whole thing. So, we apologize if this is an old and dusty hat you're being forced to wear right now. For the rest of you, geek out!
Phat Loot Phriday: Vengeful Gladiator's Touch of Defeat
We haven't done a lot of PvP gear here (any, I think) on Phat Loot, but I figured this phat wand might be a good place to start.Name: Vengeful Gladiator's Touch of Defeat (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWWiki)Type: Epic WandDamage/Speed: 252-468 Fire / 1.90 (189.5 DPS)Abilities: +18 Stamina, +14 Intellect Improves your resilience rating by 14, which is standard for PvP arena gear -- anything to counteract those big crits. Increases damage and healing by magical spells and effects by up to 18. Which doesn't seem like a lot, but for a wand, it's pretty good. The big difference between this and the other PvP season 3 wand, the Piercing Touch, is that this one doesn't have spell penetration on it. The tradeoff is the Intellect, and a few damage points, so it's up to you. Higher end players might go for the penetration (that's the only way you can get past resistances), while a player who is in the Arenas only in between raids might grab this one. It's up to you. How to Get It: Like we've said, you need to play Arena PvP to grab this one. It's available from the Arena vendors for 1000 points, which doesn't require too long to get, as long as you're a good and steady player. Holding onto a 1500 rating in a 5v5 team will get you a little over 300 points a week, which means it'll take 3-4 weeks to gain this many points (and of course you've got to play 10 games a week and make sure you're playing a good percentage of the team's total battles).But there's another catch -- season 3 added personal and team requirements to purchase the weapons. So to actually buy this, not only do you need the points, but you need to have a personal and team rating of 1850 to buy it. You don't need to keep up that rating to keep the weapon, you just need that score when you buy it. Wrong. No rating needed for the wand. Never mind.Which gets us back to the reason why we stay away from PvP gear here on Phat Loot: no matter how much you covet this, if you're not a good player, it's not yours. In the future Arena seasons, we can expect this loot to come back down: next season it'll be cheaper, and the season after that it might even be available for BG honor and tokens. But right now, it's be good or go home for this high-end Arena gear.Getting Rid of It: Vendors won't buy it, and like most PvP gear, it doesn't disenchant. But you worked hard for that rating -- while you could destroy it if you happen to find a better wand in Northrend, you might as well keep it as a trophy of your winnings.
Reminder: guess when patch 2.4 will hit the live realms
Don't forget that our contest to guess the patch 2.4 release date ends Monday, so this weekend is your last chance to leave your guess for when the patch on the PTR will go on the live realms (in American date format: DD/MM) on our contest post (not on this post). We've got a ton of guesses so far, and definitely enough to cover all the days in between now and next year (although the patch is probably dropping sometime in March), so what we'll do is pick randomly from the people who guess on the correct day to give out the game cards. And if you are super bored this weekend and want to take all the data from that post and plot us a graph of where all the guesses land (so we can come up with fun stuff like an average guess), we could probably think of something nice to do for you too.Anyway, yes, follow the rules (must be a US resident and over the age of 18, must only enter once), and if you haven't yet, leave your guess on our contest post now. The polls will close, so to speak, on Monday, and of course we'll pick the winners when the patch drops.
Spell Haste will affect global cooldown, to minimum of one second
The CMs are doing a real drive-by on the forums this afternoon. The latest tidbit dropped by Drysc (in an only barely related thread) is that spell haste will reduce the global cooldown on spells, to a minimum of one second. It will not apply to melee or ranged attacks. Previously (and currently, as of this writing), Spell Haste was capped out by the Global Cooldown-- it doesn't matter how fast your spellcasting went, because you were stuck with the 1.5 second Global Cooldown every time you cast. But as of 2.4, that cap will go bye-bye for casters, leaving them to rack up as much Spell Haste as they can, aiming towards a 1 second global cooldown.Now, Drysc does say that it would take a lot of Spell Haste to reach that one second-- more, he supposes, than is possible in the game at this point. One player speculates that it would take 785 Spell Haste rating to go from 1.5 to 1 second (+50% spell casting speed basically), and while I'm not sure about the math on that, there's no question that you'll need a lot of Spell Haste with the current gear to cast that fast. In the expansion, however...Non-casters are unhappy, to say the least-- especially hunters, who are distraught that while mages will be able to shoot off fireballs faster, they won't be able to shoot off Arcane Shots any quicker. Melee don't have much of a leg to stand on (their attacks aren't limited by mana as caster attacks are), but hunters may have a point-- they get charged mana and can't go faster. They shouldn't get too ruffled yet, though-- odds are we haven't heard the last of the big changes in patch 2.4.
Maths Training packed with ... math
Listen, we know you might have expected llamas or butts or something in Professor Kageyama's Maths Training, but the recent screens that surfaced indicate that it's gonna be full of math. Numbers. And, apparently, lots of lightning-bolt-squiggle-four-three-two hybrids or something, because we don't know what is going on in this shot. We can only surmise that someone needs Handwriting Training, or that this is an early stealth advertisement for such a title. Also, there's some Hundred Cell Calculation Methodizing going on, but we'd rather focus on the simpler, funnier side, because all those numbers make our eyeballs go curiously melty.If you happen to really like math, click on through to the other side to see more number-packed screens.
Two chances left to enter WoW Insider's Dell notebook giveaway
We're really starting to get down to the wire now-- there's only two chances left for you to enter to win in WoW Insider's big Dell notebook giveaway. To enter, all you need to do is comment on that post (not this post-- commenting on this post gets you nothing but the satisfaction of making your mark on our site), and you get to do it once per day, so since the contest ends tomorrow, you have only today and tomorrow left to leave comments.Now, the contest has gone on for six days so far, and there are about 31,000 comments on there, so your chances of winning right now if you've left a comment every day are about 6 in 31k, or about 5,166 to 1 by my math (and my math is usually wrong). I won't lie-- those chances are pretty slim, but I will say that (if my math is correct, and it probably isn't), you have a better chance of winning this laptop than bowling a 300 game (11,500 to 1), being struck by lightning (576k to 1), and getting injured by fireworks (19,556 to 1). With that kind of perspective, your chances are pretty good, wouldn't you say?Go leave a comment on the contest post anyway-- the odds are (probably) in your favor.
Stringer: PS3 games 'infinitely more fun' than Wii
Sony Chairman Howard Stringer is showing both teeth and scientific breakthrough. In a recent interview with The Guardian, Stringer was exuberant over the PlayStation 3's recent one-week triumph over Nintendo Wii in Japanese hardware sales. "I'm happy the Wii seems to be running a bit short of hardware," he said, before following up with the quip that the PS3 "will come into its own because its [high-end games] are infinitely more fun, demanding and exciting."Infinitely more fun, you say? So how does one define infinite fun? Let's arbitrarily assign Wii games with a base number, we'll call 'W.' For conversion purposes, we'll let W equate to one anti-meh. Infinity itself is an abstract notion that we can obtain through various roundabout methods. For example, take the limit as 'n' approaches 0 of anti-meh divided by 'n.' (You can't directly divide by zero without the power of the Cell processor.)This approach works for all scalars of anti-meh: oh, gee whiz, golly, awesome, sweet, wow, etc., which is convenient if a Wii game really is fun, then we can apply the limit (let's arbitrarily call it the "Sony limit") and obtain infinity, knocking the wind out of Nintendo's fun factor.
Warcrafter does the heavy math on your character's stats
Amanna is the latest blogger to bring up Warcrafter, a nifty little online application that is basically the Armory on speed. It'll not only pull up your character, your gear, and your talents, but it'll use all of that information to calculate everything you'd ever want to know about your stats, including DPS, crit percentage, spellpower, and even where all of those things come from. It'll even go into your spells, and calculate the average heal or average damage of your most-used spells and abilities. Warcrafter tells you everything it can calculate about your character, directly from the numbers pulled out of the Armory. Fascinating to see.There is also a sandbox page, which is everything an aspiring theorycrafter would ever need to make up the character of their dreams. Punch in a class, race, and gear, and then go to town shifting around buffs, weapons, talents, and anything else you'd want to check. Cerberus is an attentive creator, too-- if there's a calculation off or a piece of gear missing, he seems more than happy to add it in. I only hope that we don't crush the site with our exposure.The sandbox page mentions something about "locking" the character, and it would be cool to have a quick permalink setup for created characters (we could have someone show off all the buffs/gear needed to get the Ghost Wolf taming cast time down, or show off the highest possible spellpower available in the game so far). But other than that, Warcrafter is a great piece of web-based software. Very cool way to inspect every single aspect of your character out of game.
Learn kanji, math, and breakdancing with Masu x Masu 2
With the trickle of DS training games from Japan well on the way to becoming an avalanche, it was always likely that publishers would push their products in increasingly novel ways. At least, that can be the only explanation behind this lovably bonkers advert for Shogakukan's kanji and math trainer Masu x Masu 2.We haven't the faintest idea about how the creators linked breakdancing with kanji and math, but we do know this: we now very strongly believe that more games should be advertised with breakdancing. Don your helmet and windmill your way past the post break for a second trailer.
Latest Armory population figures from Okoloth
Okoloth has dropped an update to his Armory analysis, featuring the latest and greatest information on about half of the World of Warcraft's denizens. He surveyed 4.6 million characters on the Armory, and while that sounds like a lot (it sounds like half of WoW's population, except that Blizzard's 9 million figure is supposed to be players, not characters), it's not actually that much of a representative sample. Still, compared to the table scraps that Blizzard gives us, it's something, so let's get what we can from it.He finds that the biggest majority of players are at level 70 compared to the other levels, but there are still only about 40% of the characters there (adding fuel to the fire on both sides of creating midlevel and endgame content). Mages and Warriors are the standouts on the class breakdown at level 70 (with 13.5% and 14.3% respectively-- what tank problem?), while Shaman are the biggest losers-- only about 7% of level 70s he surveyed were Shaman. Sounds about right. Across all levels, Warriors still have the biggest percentage, while Hunters follow them up. And on the low end, it's Druids, Pallys, and at rock bottom, Shamans. People just don't like playing the totem class.He's also got new stats on realm balance, but remember that these numbers are not much more than guesses. They're pretty close, though, even for that. Drysc told us that Agamaggan's Alliance/Horde balance was about 1.1:1, and Oko's figures have it at about 1.09:1 (by my math), which is pretty darn close. Big ups to Oko for putting these numbers together, always interesting to see the figures on how and where people are playing in Azeroth.[ via WoR ]
PTR Notes: How much extra quest XP?
One of the features of patch 2.3 that I'm very much anticipating is the hastened leveling curve for characters between level 20 and 60. In addition to the XP required per level being reduced by 20%, loot from leveling dungeons improving, and "many" outdoor elites being made non-elite (not including Hogger, thankfully), the patch notes list that "the amount of experience granted by quests has been increased between levels 30 and 60". Which is nice, but the math lover in me wants (nay, demands) to know precisely how much the increase is.Fortunately, Tekkub is on it. He's compiling a spreadsheet with quest XP changes over at Google Docs, and he needs your help to collect more data. If you want to help, you'll need a character on the PTR in the affected level range (30–60), and you'll need to go do some quests and note down how much XP you get from them. Then just email Tekkub (his email address is on the spreadsheet) with your data, and the collective information base of the WoW population will be increased! Ah, science. Personally I'm not seeing much of a pattern on the spreadsheet yet, but I'm sure there is one, and we will figure it eventually.
Spiritual Guidance: The spirit debate
Every Sunday, Eliah or Elizabeth will bring you their thoughts on the Priest class with Spiritual Guidance. Whether it's keeping your fellow players alive or melting their faces, you can read about it here!This week, we've got a special episode co-authored by your two Spiritual Guidance writers, Eliah Hecht and Elizabeth Harper. In the course of emails around the WoW Insider bullpen, we noticed that there were some differing perspectives on the utility of Blizzard's favorite Priest stat, Spirit. So we decided to sit down and hash it out the old-fashioned way: an IM debate. Both of our mains are priests in a similar situation. We're Holy-specced and raiding somewhere around the middle of Karazhan. So considering how similar are gameplay niches are, it's interesting to note the differences in our opinions. On with the show, and do let us know what your take is.Eliah Hecht: So. It's going to be a complicated issue, because you've got a lot of different kinds of priests to worry about...Holy vs Shadow, leveling vs raiding vs PvP...My take on it is that Spirit is paramount for all leveling specs, and for raiding holy priests, and not so much for the other spots on the grid.Elizabeth Harper: See, I'm of a couple of minds on it for leveling. On one hand, you get more benefit from less spirit at lower levels, so leveling, I think you get more out of it. But it's still an issue of practicality -- leveling up, i'll grab spirit if it happens to be on something I otherwise want. But the size of mana and health pools is still more important. (And if you have spirit tap, a little bit of spirit can go a long way)
Blizzard "stealing" XP with leveling changes
Warcry has a super interesting reading of the XP leveling changes that Blizzard is making in 2.3. Their style is a little more, err, informal than ours, but they're right-- Blizzard is basically stealing XP from you in the next patch. Vaneras confirmed the other day that players who have a certain percentage of XP before the patch will keep that same percentage of XP, but not the same amount of XP. So, if, for example, you're halfway through level 59 when the patch hits, you'll lose about 600,000 XP that you've already earned.But before you get all angry about Blizzard wasting all that time you spent leveling, realize that things will likely even out in the end. Even though you'll lose 600,000 XP from the amount you have, you'll still be halfway through level 59, and you won't need as much XP as you did before to level to 60. So you haven't really "lost" anything, because even though Blizzard has "taken away" some XP, you didn't need what they took anyway.As we've said before, these leveling improvements are going to be great news, not only for altaholics who are leveling up their third or fourth character by now, but also for guilds eager to see some new 70s to bring into the raiding mix. Folks who are leveling both before and after patch 2.3 are going to experience some strange math, but that happens all the time anyway (did you know that all the stuff you're killing at level 70 now doesn't count towards the experience you'll need to earn in the next expansion?). Blizzard is tweaking the numbers, but the experience will still be faster.
Tashiten: training to the power of ten
Nintendo's new math game will teach you to recognize ten in its natural habitat. Tashiten: Tashite 10 Ni Suru Monogatari is all about adding and subtracting to make onscreen numbers add up to 10.That sounds really limiting, but the screenshots show at least five different games, all based on making numbers add up to 10. Apparently the game contains more than 30 different tasks.Naturally, this game will release on October 10, at a cost of 1000 yen 4800 yen (we suppose that making money supercedes keeping to a theme.)
Fun with WoW Math
12_Drakon on LiveJournal posed the question: "I wonder if developers consciously changed itemization to do WoW math less subtle and more apparent, so that more players become, ahem, aware of it?"The answer is most definitely yes. The developers during the Professions and Items Panel at BlizzCon stated that Resilience in particular was changed because no one could tell it was working. They added the reduction of crit damage specifically because the WoW math was too subtle.Another example of "exaggerated" WoW math is the increase of stats on items to help fill in the defensive gaps. An Item has a certain stat point value. Previous to TBC, 50 Stat Points = 50 Stamina or 50 Strength. So an item that was "worth" 50 stat points would have 50 points of a stat. Combining stats would increase the number, though, so that an item worth 50 stat points would have 34 Stamina plus 34 Strength. This way, the value of the item isn't reduced too much by spreading the stats around. Combining three stats reduced each stat even more to 26 points a piece.
Things I learned from WoW
Sydney has a cool list over on WoW Ladies LJ, about what she learned from videogames, and most of the items sound specifically like they're from World of Warcraft. Diplomacy and Leadership are probably pretty obvious, and we've already heard that some companies are seeing a stint as a GL in WoW as a bonus to the resume. But Sydney also learned the value of a savings account (because saving up for an epic mount might be the biggest amount of saving some players have done), math and economics from WoW. There's no question that the math can get pretty complicated, and if you can wrap your head around how much agility you need to break 25% on your Dodge, you're definitely on top of algebra, if not a little bit of calculus.But the two items I was most surprised by were that Sydney says she learned vocabulary and problem-solving from videogames. I don't doubt at all that they're true, but learning vocabulary is not something that's normally expected from playing games, either online or offline. Still, words like "mitigate" (her example) are used all the time when theorycrafting, and while there are a lot of jargon words floating around (you'll probably never use "tanking" in a real life conversation), just using that vocabulary can help. And problem-solving is obvious, not just in WoW, but in all videogames-- you could argue that all videogaming is simply being presented with a problem for the player to solve.I'm not saying that we should all play WoW all the time instead of going to school (sorry kids). But when people with self-control and a good center play videogames (as opposed to people who don't), all kinds of good can happen.
