The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

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TenPoundHammer

Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by TenPoundHammer »

Ironhorse wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 9:54 pm
TenPoundHammer wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 7:46 pm
MarkBarrett wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 7:42 pm BOOK CHAPTERS $200: Chapter 21 of this classic is "Laurie Makes Mischief, and Jo Makes Peace"

If you see "Jo" in the top box go with Little Women or the author Alcott. It does not matter whether someone is familiar or not with Laurie. Certainly reading the book or seeing a movie version is not necessary. It's a basic J! Pavlov. "Obscure" is in no way applicable in this case.
Because that is literally the only thing ever to have been called Jo, right?
Certainly the most famous book character with that name.

I've never read nor seen Little Women but one of the few things I know about it is there is a character by that name.
Whereas I find it's one of those things that comes up all the time, yet they use a different path to it literally every time so I never pick up on the Pavlovs. Same with Lord of the Flies. It seems literally every clue for that one uses a different TOM.
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Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by OrangeSAM »

MarkBarrett wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 7:42 pm BOOK CHAPTERS $200: Chapter 21 of this classic is "Laurie Makes Mischief, and Jo Makes Peace"

If you see "Jo" in the top box go with Little Women or the author Alcott. It does not matter whether someone is familiar or not with Laurie. Certainly reading the book or seeing a movie version is not necessary. It's a basic J! Pavlov. "Obscure" is in no way applicable in this case.
If you don't want to read the the book, unabridged or abridged, or track down the 1930's or 1990's film, you should know a new version will be out this winter. Get thee to a cinema, TPH.
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Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by CasketRomance »

MarkBarrett wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 7:42 pm BOOK CHAPTERS $200: Chapter 21 of this classic is "Laurie Makes Mischief, and Jo Makes Peace"

If you see "Jo" in the top box go with Little Women or the author Alcott. It does not matter whether someone is familiar or not with Laurie. Certainly reading the book or seeing a movie version is not necessary. It's a basic J! Pavlov. "Obscure" is in no way applicable in this case.
indeed...have never read the book nor do i know much of anything in regards to that book, but i got that clue correct
TenPoundHammer

Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by TenPoundHammer »

Why TPH sucks at FJ! even on Teen Week:

Monday: Blah blah Witch = Salem, no brainer.
Tuesday: I don't know my British royalty at all, it could be anybody.
Wednesday: Dafuq is "Troy" in this context? It could be anything.
Thursday: I don't see any TOM in here at all, it could be anybody.
Friday: Brain latched hard onto "fallout" which isn't 8 letters, and refused to budge.

What do I even put down if I legit have no idea what to even guess?
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Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by MarkBarrett »

Harry Styles is the guy from One Direction that kept me from skunking the POP MUSIC category. If there was a TOM it went by me as I only knew how to recognize him from the picture.
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Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by QBall »

TenPoundHammer wrote: Fri Jun 21, 2019 8:22 pm Why TPH sucks at FJ! even on Teen Week:

Monday: Blah blah Witch = Salem, no brainer.
Tuesday: I don't know my British royalty at all, it could be anybody.
Wednesday: Dafuq is "Troy" in this context? It could be anything.
Thursday: I don't see any TOM in here at all, it could be anybody.
Friday: Brain latched hard onto "fallout" which isn't 8 letters, and refused to budge.

What do I even put down if I legit have no idea what to even guess?
One thing that might help is to make a guess (or list of guesses) off the category before any clue is revealed. A few boardies mention they do that already. My wife, my mother-in-law and I all take a shot at what the response will be when the category is revealed, and we'll hit on the correct response, clue unseen, usually once every couple of weeks. I even hit on the Wednesday and Thursday ones in consecutive days.

Some categories are easier to do that than others (presidents or US states versus word origins), but it can get your mind going in the right direction by narrowing down the possibilities, and then picking from there. Even if you know just one response that might fit the category, I think it's helpful. At the very least, you'll have one thing to put down if you're stumped otherwise. If a weird stumper happens, it happens.

And stop thinking the answer could be anything/anyone/anybody, most things you can boil down to a few choices. Maybe approach FJ and other clues like you would picking letters for WOF. That show asks you to pick from just 26 letters to fill out the puzzle. They're not asking you to pick random Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic or Cyrillic characters.
TenPoundHammer

Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by TenPoundHammer »

QBall wrote: Mon Jun 24, 2019 3:04 pm Some categories are easier to do that than others (presidents or US states versus word origins), but it can get your mind going in the right direction by narrowing down the possibilities, and then picking from there. Even if you know just one response that might fit the category, I think it's helpful. At the very least, you'll have one thing to put down if you're stumped otherwise. If a weird stumper happens, it happens.
A lot of times, I just have nothing to go on. I tried to dig as deep as I could on "colleges and universities in California", but my brain was just an absolute void in that regard. i've heard of Stanford, but not even in 5 minutes of thinking and searching did it come up. It seems that a lot of times, the relevant information just escapes me entirely. It's like some kind of recall issue or something. Any other time you ask me point blank to name a college in California, I'm sure I could rattle off a few with ease. But Final Jeopardy! time, just static.
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Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by MarkBarrett »

Maybe you will get one more crack at them before the season is over? search.php?keywords=boer&terms=all&auth ... mit=Search

It's probably over two dozen in the Archive for Boers or the War just in the 2010s.
TenPoundHammer

Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by TenPoundHammer »

MarkBarrett wrote: Mon Jul 01, 2019 9:02 pm Maybe you will get one more crack at them before the season is over? search.php?keywords=boer&terms=all&auth ... mit=Search

It's probably over two dozen in the Archive for Boers or the War just in the 2010s.
True, but with the three times that i've NHOI so far, it was Boer War. I wouldn't have clued to it being named for a group of people any more than I failed to realize that the Bering Sea is also named for a person.
TenPoundHammer

Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by TenPoundHammer »

Probably poking the bear, but I saw this clue from May 2017 come up:
It's the square root of x^2 - 6x + 9
Okay, x^2 and 9 clearly have square roots. But what do I do with the 6x? That doesn't have a square root.

All I remember is randomly pulling a 3 out of your butt, and somehow breaking this problem down into 10,000 smaller ones just to solve it. What exactly do you even DO with a problem like this?
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Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by Coelacanth »

TenPoundHammer wrote: Wed Jul 10, 2019 4:11 am Probably poking the bear, but I saw this clue from May 2017 come up:
It's the square root of x^2 - 6x + 9
Okay, x^2 and 9 clearly have square roots. But what do I do with the 6x? That doesn't have a square root.

All I remember is randomly pulling a 3 out of your butt, and somehow breaking this problem down into 10,000 smaller ones just to solve it. What exactly do you even DO with a problem like this?
If you can't look at this expression and immediately see that it is (x-3)^2, well, then algebra is just not for you. You're far from alone in that regard.
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TenPoundHammer

Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by TenPoundHammer »

Coelacanth wrote: Wed Jul 10, 2019 11:34 am
TenPoundHammer wrote: Wed Jul 10, 2019 4:11 am Probably poking the bear, but I saw this clue from May 2017 come up:
It's the square root of x^2 - 6x + 9
Okay, x^2 and 9 clearly have square roots. But what do I do with the 6x? That doesn't have a square root.

All I remember is randomly pulling a 3 out of your butt, and somehow breaking this problem down into 10,000 smaller ones just to solve it. What exactly do you even DO with a problem like this?
If you can't look at this expression and immediately see that it is (x-3)^2, well, then algebra is just not for you. You're far from alone in that regard.
And what function does this problem even serve?

I don't even see any possible steps that can be done. What am I doing to the numbers here?
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Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by econgator »

TenPoundHammer wrote: Wed Jul 10, 2019 11:11 pm
What am I doing to the numbers here?
Coelacanth wrote: Wed Jul 10, 2019 11:34 am algebra is just not for you.
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Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by 1stlvlthinker »

TenPoundHammer wrote: Wed Jul 10, 2019 4:11 am Probably poking the bear, but I saw this clue from May 2017 come up:
It's the square root of x^2 - 6x + 9
Okay, x^2 and 9 clearly have square roots. But what do I do with the 6x? That doesn't have a square root.

All I remember is randomly pulling a 3 out of your butt, and somehow breaking this problem down into 10,000 smaller ones just to solve it. What exactly do you even DO with a problem like this?
Look, this is basically Algebra 1. If you didn't pass it, then you're not going to get it. Lots of people have issues with algebra, you're not alone.

But basically your issue is mixing up addition and multiplication. To take the square root of x^2 - 6x + 9, you don't take the square root of each term. You have to take the square root of the whole thing.
Now swimming in the J! pool.
TenPoundHammer

Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by TenPoundHammer »

1stlvlthinker wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 5:53 pm Look, this is basically Algebra 1. If you didn't pass it, then you're not going to get it. Lots of people have issues with algebra, you're not alone.

But basically your issue is mixing up addition and multiplication. To take the square root of x^2 - 6x + 9, you don't take the square root of each term. You have to take the square root of the whole thing.
Yes, and how do you make that thing any simpler? x^2 - 6x + 9 can't be simplified because there are no like terms, right?
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Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by seaborgium »

It has to do with the way that a sum multiplies with a sum. When a+b is multiplied by c+d, the result is the sum of all the possible (first sum component * second sum component)s, so that would be a*c + a*d + b*c + b*d. In the case of x^2 - 6x + 9, we have to find values for a, b, c, and d that multiply out to that. Since it's asking for a square root, that means a = c and b = d, so we're just looking for an (a + b)*(a + b) that works.
(a + b)*(a + b) = a^2 + a*b + b*a + b^2
a*b = b*a, so that's a^2 + 2(a*b) + b^2.
What number can be squared to make x^2? x.
What number can be squared to make 9? 3 and -3.
Which of those two multiplies by x and 2 to make -6? -3.
Therefore a = x and b = -3, and a + b = (x - 3).

In algebra we're taught to recognize the patterns in the last two coefficients. If we're told to find the square root of x^2 + bx + c, we have to find a number that doubles to b and squares to c. -3 doubles to -6 and squares to 9, so (x - 3) squares to x^2 - 6x + 9.
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Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by 1stlvlthinker »

TenPoundHammer wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 6:06 pm
1stlvlthinker wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 5:53 pm Look, this is basically Algebra 1. If you didn't pass it, then you're not going to get it. Lots of people have issues with algebra, you're not alone.

But basically your issue is mixing up addition and multiplication. To take the square root of x^2 - 6x + 9, you don't take the square root of each term. You have to take the square root of the whole thing.
Yes, and how do you make that thing any simpler? x^2 - 6x + 9 can't be simplified because there are no like terms, right?
Correct, but you can FACTOR it out. Again, not the most intuitive thing to learn, but this is a basic Algebra 1 topic.
Now swimming in the J! pool.
TenPoundHammer

Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by TenPoundHammer »

seaborgium wrote: Thu Jul 11, 2019 7:16 pm It has to do with the way that a sum multiplies with a sum. When a+b is multiplied by c+d, the result is the sum of all the possible (first sum component * second sum component)s, so that would be a*c + a*d + b*c + b*d. In the case of x^2 - 6x + 9, we have to find values for a, b, c, and d that multiply out to that. Since it's asking for a square root, that means a = c and b = d, so we're just looking for an (a + b)*(a + b) that works.
(a + b)*(a + b) = a^2 + a*b + b*a + b^2
a*b = b*a, so that's a^2 + 2(a*b) + b^2.
What number can be squared to make x^2? x.
What number can be squared to make 9? 3 and -3.
Which of those two multiplies by x and 2 to make -6? -3.
Therefore a = x and b = -3, and a + b = (x - 3).

In algebra we're taught to recognize the patterns in the last two coefficients. If we're told to find the square root of x^2 + bx + c, we have to find a number that doubles to b and squares to c. -3 doubles to -6 and squares to 9, so (x - 3) squares to x^2 - 6x + 9.
Okay, how did all of this make a million times more sense than trying to teach me to subtract by adding? Maybe because for once I'm not overthinking it into oblivion or running off in a screaming panic at the sight of the first element that I don't immediately recognize?
TenPoundHammer

Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by TenPoundHammer »

A look into my Coryats:

https://j-scorer.com/shared/TenPoundHammer

It does seem like my Coryats are trending a little higher, but I'm still absolutely dreadful at FJ!

And some of the outliers are VERY outlying, such as the -$1,600 on 7/3. Should any of this give me pause on my prospects?
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Re: The Official TPH Education Thread (POTENTIAL GAME DAY SPOILERS)

Post by opusthepenguin »

TenPoundHammer wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 12:46 am A look into my Coryats:

https://j-scorer.com/shared/TenPoundHammer

It does seem like my Coryats are trending a little higher, but I'm still absolutely dreadful at FJ!

And some of the outliers are VERY outlying, such as the -$1,600 on 7/3. Should any of this give me pause on my prospects?
Probably. But if you get The Call, obviously you'll go, right? Best thing to do at that point is practice wagering to win on a missed FJ.
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