Tides must also be interesting.
Ask Sung!
Setting-appropriate technology: algebra, geometry, deductive proofs. Maybe some light probability, but that would be frowned upon because it’s close to the False Virtue of Hope, though it would be interesting to use it as an argument against Hope
(double-entry bookkeeping dates from the 13th century and, thus, is a setting-appropriate technology. Yes, I checked. One of my character goals is to convince others that Accountants are heroic figures)
There’s nothing that you can do with an Enigma machine that you can’t do with a room full of ushabti - just saying. Of course, attempting to prove this will probably result on crotch-punching. My character even has access to computers - Libre di Office di Sarvos and his family, stout fellows every single one of them. When the formulae for Before the Throne of Estavus changed, I supplied them with the new details and they were able to come back with a new set of tables of profitability in less than two days! Worth every crown I paid them
That would make the math a lot easier, but looking again at the setting FAQ, you have to ask whether the fact that no-one has figured out a pattern for the changes in constellations is because everyone assumes we’re geocentric and we’re not. Anyone for epicycles? And if someone wants to re-enact the Galileo vs. Pope Urban VIII affair, I, for one would applaud it
I argue for elementary information theory because one of my character inspirations is the chaos theory guy from Jurassic Park, and we have the Heliopticon to make coding theory more advanced.
I have also admitted to a favourite book of mine being Tedius of Tabulous’ seminal work Quondam Calculorum (Concerning Certain Types of Pebble) which uses the analogy of limestone dust to explain the methods of integral and differential fluxion. 
Don’t we have an Exemplar whose entire thing this is already?
I can see the Empire getting as far as as Hartley, particularly the idea of information as a quantity. Even as far as W = K log m, if we take m as the number of different types of “dot” or “dash”. Hartley functions? Sure - the Urizen would want to know how likely it is that their message has been corrupted and I could see them coming up with parity checks, redundancy, maybe even Hamming code
But Shannon entropy? Fascinating idea - in this world, Shannon derived it from probability theory and thermodynamics, but if you’re starting from a collection of dots and dashes and just want to know how many dots are going to be read as dashes (or missed entirely), then all you really need is algebra, logarithms, a lot of time and the need/desire to figure it out. Don’t you?
You wouldn’t call it “entropy” though - is “chaos” too “on the nose”?
I’m not sure that my character really believes in infinitesimals. He’d follow “Rough” John Shipley’s argument against them: “If you chop a ring coin in half, it ain’t a ring any more - and if you chop a throne into eight’s, you don’t get crowns, you get a thick ear from your Accountant.”
If, however, you presented him with an analogy in terms of the filling and emptying of the locks on the Sapphire Stair - and then showed him that the empirical results matched the calculation using fluxions - that would be a different matter. He still wouldn’t see what you’d do with them, though
I don’t know what it’s called when spoken, but written down its symbol is Evrom.
Nice
Yep, but she’s not a paragon. Yet
“Oh, you guys have been doing calculations on a little bit of paper, sorry I was busy WATCHING A MAGICIAN SUMMON AN ICE CASTLE!!! and missed it. What were you saying again? Wait, no, never mind, THERE’S A MAGICIAN OVER THERE SUMMONING A SPIRIT BACK FROM THE DEAD!! Numbers you say?”
You say that, but most large rituals start by someone doing calculations on a little bit of paper. 
“… And here, sodales, we see exactly why it is that the magic of certain Realms appears to have no discernible use.”
:ugeek:
Trying to discern the uses of things. Can’t you just appreciate beauty for what it is? Can’t you just leave a mystery unsolved sometimes? Somebody has eaten too much Day magic.
Anyway, I think the general OOC point I wanted to make is that we ought not worry too much about what sorts of maths is available to our characters as the bulk of what maths would be used for is likely to happen in Downtime and not while we are on the field. Your sextant is cool, I’m sure it does some very nice things to do with ships and stuff, which I won’t worry about too much while I’m slogging through the mud of Anvil and thinking about which priest to upset next.
…isn’t it “all of them”?
Hopefully.
[quote=“SteveC”]Trying to discern the uses of things. Can’t you just appreciate beauty for what it is? Can’t you just leave a mystery unsolved sometimes? Somebody has eaten too much Day magic.
Anyway, I think the general OOC point I wanted to make is that we ought not worry too much about what sorts of maths is available to our characters as the bulk of what maths would be used for is likely to happen in Downtime and not while we are on the field. Your sextant is cool, I’m sure it does some very nice things to do with ships and stuff, which I won’t worry about too much while I’m slogging through the mud of Anvil and thinking about which priest to upset next.[/quote]
Totally.
The advanced maths I’ve batted around in setting only came up because we were jammin’ with a maths eternal in the Day realm, and there are some pop-maths tricks that look like actual Day magic.