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Introduction to Calculations for Beginners

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Technically having multiple explanations doesn't do harm, then again having two official explanations about everything seem rather redundant. If you find the calculation pages hard to use I would rather try to improve them, then to have a summary of all of them squeezed upon a single page.

It also adds unnecessary work as every time a new page is written or something about the existing is changed, changes would have to be made to the composite page as well (which isn't simple copy and paste, because the different formats).


Personally I didn't think that finding the calculation pages is that difficult given that they all are in a category together.

If there are navigation problems I would quite simply solve those by adding a "See also" section to the bottom of the page listing some other calculation pages and a link to the calculation instructions category.


If there are explanations in the calculation instruction pages that you find difficult to understand or hard to use in practice, I would suggest simply improving upon those instead of writing a second explanation somewhere else. And if there are things that aren't explained yet add new pages or expand old ones.


In regards to structure most of the articles stand seperately. Aside from reading the calculation guide first to figure out scaling and stuff all articles can be used without knowledge of the others, meaning that having them on a single page doesn't add to the structure.

So the calculation guide should lay all the groundwork needed for understanding the other articles and doing calculations based on them. In that hinsight I can see the calculation guide page to be extended by some things in your article, like the section about formatting you have, and a section about converting units (which should subsequently be erased from the calculations page). I think incorporating links to cinematic time and calc stacking into it would also help.


This is at least my opinon on things. If everyone else thinks having all explanations twice is meaningful then that is fine with me as well. As said it does no harm, except causing more work.


That said two things about the current version of the article: The criterias on if something is considered lightning and in which case one uses or not uses KE should be added, as otherwise it will increase the amount of calcs that do that wrong.
 
@DontTalk

Thank you for the evaluation.
 
Thank you guys. It already looks great! Now I wonder how to merge images to make my calc (I was going to do a calc for a certain verse to see what the verse did wrong for evasion speed...)
 
@DontTalk

The thing about the Calculation Guide page is that it is basically just a reference sheet of values for me at this point. It doesn't really provide detailed steps to the point that the uninitiated can follow it, which is the problem.

I personally don't see the problem with two pages, with one being more encompassing and linking to all the other pages. I don't see how it would be that much more work once implemented since the pages are rarely updated as-is.

It seems like almost everyone here is enthusiastic about this new page, but if it is an issue we can just incorporate what I have currently made into the existing page, or absorb all the info of the existing page into the new page. I don't know the ins and outs of Wiki management, but I personally don't see the harm in having two. I'll leave that up to the content mods and admins, though.

With all that said, I mean no disrespect toward you or your opinion about this, and thank you for giving your time to evaluate this.

@Arbitrary

Alright, I'll add that in when I update the page to V2.0
 
I personally do not mind an easy to follow introduction page in addition to the more indepth ones.
 
With hope I can manage to make this new page both. But I personally have no desire to see any existing page removed.
 
Assaltwaffle said:
@DontTalk
The thing about the Calculation Guide page is that it is basically just a reference sheet of values for me at this point. It doesn't really provide detailed steps to the point that the uninitiated can follow it, which is the problem.
Thing is the existing calculation pages should ideally be useable. In other words if you think they are written in such a way that the uninitiated can't follow them they should be rewritten so that they can, so or so.

The explosion yield page is for example already nothing but a step by step guide to the calculation. Similar the earthquake calculations pages.

Essentially your article and all the calculation pages fulfill exactly the same purpose. It is by no means harmful and if everyone wants the article, as it seems, that is fine. I just consider it redundant given that one could update the existing pages with better instructions to fulfill the purpose equally well.
 
@DontTalk

Would you be willing to make the previously existing instruction pages easier to follow?
 
@Ant

The thing about the current Calc guide is that it isn't detailed enough and is so vague that would need a complete redo in order to serve as a true guide.

It seems like pretty much everyone has agreed that my current page is easier to follow and more informative. If you would like me to take all the info in the calculation guide page and essentially absorb it into what I already have I can do that, but I think having a very detailed and beginner-friendly page as well as a more rough outline page is not as problem, as they would be usable as a guide and reference, respectively.
 
I am not particularly good at explaining things.

I mean a good chunck of those pages are written by me, which is certainly part of the reason they aren't easy to follow yet.

I could try.

Or given that everybody wants the new page we could simply have that. In that case I can improve the explanations on the pages later, by orientating myself on the better written explanations there. That would make things even more redundant, but ┬»\_(Òâä)_/┬»


In any case if nobody minds, could someone unlock the calculation pages? I think we should in any case solve the navigation issue, so I would like to go around and insert "See also"-sections into the articles.
 
Not to interupt DT, but I am going to list off the current propositions for updating the page.

  • Add link to watchframebyframe
  • Add latent heat explanation
  • Add latent heat values
  • Add common conversion values
  • Add airburst formula emphasis in explosions guide
  • Add Lina's Mountain/Island quickie
  • Add Lightspeed and Lightyear explanation
  • Add Example Calcs for common methods
Anything I am missing?
 
I am actually unfamiliar with any multiplier for underwater movement. I would appreciate anyone who would be able to help with giving me this information.
 
I personally think we need a few more examples listed in the Calc Stacking page; primarily the multiple hits fallacy. Example would be that character A has an attack that was calc'd at 2 Gigajoules or Building level, and it takes exactly 30 hits for him to kill character B, and the cacl member decided to simply multiply the 2*30 = 60 Gigajoules and rate his durability at City Block level. Reason that doesn't work is because if character B has durability 30x greater than character A's attack potency, character B should be completely invulnerable to character A outside of hax/durability negation. It's better to just scale to the first hit and treat every other hit as a stamina feat rather than a stacked durability feat.
 
Assaltwaffle said:
@Ant

The thing about the current Calc guide is that it isn't detailed enough and is so vague that would need a complete redo in order to serve as a true guide.

It seems like pretty much everyone has agreed that my current page is easier to follow and more informative. If you would like me to take all the info in the calculation guide page and essentially absorb it into what I already have I can do that, but I think having a very detailed and beginner-friendly page as well as a more rough outline page is not as problem, as they would be usable as a guide and reference, respectively.
Okay. I am personally fine with both guide and reference pages complementing each other.
 
I know it's a work in progress but the current page looks very messy and hard to understand, I'm just worried that even if it gets cleaned up the sheer amount of pages like this will just confuse them. It might be better to learn from experience like I did, but that can cause problems in of it's own.
 
In what way does it look messy? It is detailed and the majority of the users here have said that they have learned from it even without the additions I am planning for it. This isn't about getting better at calcing, this is about initiating people into the realm of calcing and having a composite resource for calc information, formulas, and the like.
 
The new one.


It's supposed to be an introduction for beginners, but you have this on the very first heading:

Now that you have time frame, you need a distance. This can be gathered a variety of ways. If a something within the feat gives you a distance (e.g. Flash stating he just ran around the city), take this and convert whatever distance covered into meters; this conversion to meters applies for pixel scaling and angsizing. Whatever your result is, it must be in meters! The next option is pixel scaling, which will be most commonly used. In order to pixel scale, you will need a program capable of both capturing images and altering them. Two seperate programs can be used to achieve this, or a single program if applicable. Gyazo and Paint.net can be used for image capture and alteration, respectively. If you are capturing a YouTube, video try to include the full screen for reference, which is 854x480 pixels when capturing with Gyazo. Once you are able to begin pixel scaling, bring up the full image and begin working. If the distance you want to measure isn't easily found, put it into perspective with another object/character in the shot! You will not always be graced with knowing the distance or height of what you want, so get creative. If there is an adult man in the shot, measure him in pixels and take the average height for men, which is approximately 177 centimeters, and find out how many centimeters/meters each pixel is worth. Once you have this, you can work from there. Sometimes you may need to scale an object to something of known height (X) to an unknown height object (Y) and apply the now found object (Y) height to a new object (Z) that wasn't previously scale-able, due to the lack of a known distance object on screen. Once you have determined how many meters/centimeters a pixel is worth, measure the distance in question to determine the real distance covered. To angsize, follow the guide on our Calculation Guide page. Remember to convert to meters if you were using any other measurement! Feel free to use Google's hypotenuse calculator or input the formula yourself (c=a^2+b^2, where a^2+b^2 is under the square root symbol). If the distance can be determined by a 90 degree angle, do so to save yourself the time! Paint.net has a built-in angular indicator for the line function.

^All that could just simply be explained in the Calculation Guide's angsizing section. Instead you start throwing in X, Y and Z and giving complicated explanations to them when they are already on the wiki in a simpler format. You even link the page I'm talking about.

And that Note bit is VERY confusing. Why would the distance need to be perfectly angled in the first place? I've never seen that in any page, not calc ever. This one might just be my own ignorance, but surely you just plug the angle regardless and the size and the calculator gives you the distance right?

The Speed Calc by Comparison has too many steps, I mean the lightning/projectile dodging pages has a simple equation that most can easily understand as soon as they see.

I might have overblown the whole thing though, and it's seems like only the speed bit if confusing, everything else is fine.
 
How is that hard to follow? At all? The note is very simplistic and I don't think anyone else but you is having a problem understanding it.

It doesn't have too many steps, it is supposed to be a hand-holding walkthrough of how to do such a calc. Throwing an equation at someone with no info isn't going to do much. I didn't learn how to do lightning dodges from that formula; I did it by looking at the process that multiple calcs took to get a result and went from there. I would prefer it be easier to do than trying to find lightning dodge blogs, although I even recommend doing such for practice.
 
I agree with Assaltwaffle. Please stop giving the calc group members a hard time.
 
I can link to that blog, @Reppuzan. Would you think that should go under tips, formulas, or something new?
 
Well I am going to put this page into V2.0 tomorrow. Going to revise grammar, try to clean it further, and add everything that has been suggested. Once that is completed, I believe it will be ready to use, unless someone else has something they wanted added that I haven't already listed above. For reference, here is what I am planning to add.

  • Add link to watchframebyframe
  • Add latent heat explanation
  • Add latent heat values
  • Add common conversion values
  • Add airburst formula emphasis in explosions guide
  • Add Lina's Mountain/Island quickie
  • Add Lightspeed and Lightyear explanation
  • Add Example Calcs for common methods
 
Shouldn't there be like a quick explanation on what joules, tons, and foes are? And how stuff like petatons and petaFoe work?

Other than that, I think it will be an awesome guide for new calcers.
 
I don't think I need to explain the petatons/foes. They are just prefixes. I can link to a list of prefixes though. Also joule, ton, and foe are already explained in the values page, though I can elaborate on this further if desired. I just don't want to add too much to it; I already have a lot.
 
A FOE is just 10^44 joules.

As for the prefixes, here's a simple list.

  • 1000 Tons of TNT = 1 Kiloton
  • 1000 Kilotons = 1 Megaton
  • 1000 Megatons = 1 Gigaton
  • 1000 Gigatons = 1 Teraton
  • 1000 Teratons = 1 Petaton
  • 1000 Petatons = 1 Exaton
  • 1000 Exatons = 1 Zettaton
  • 1000 Zettatons = 1 Yottaton
  • 1000 Yottatons = 1 Ninaton*
  • 1000 Ninatons = 1 Tenaton*
  • 1000 Tenatons = 1 Tenakiloton*
*means unofficial unit.
The same goes for FOE, just replace the -ton with FOE.
 
So the order of more potent values is Joules, Tons, then FOE?

With joule being the most basic unit?

If thats true then I understand it now.
 
Yes. Joule is the most basic unit. 1 Ton of TNT is exactly what it sounds like. A Foe is the energy from a supernova. So, Dark, do you think I should add the prefixes to my page or would that be unnecessary clutter?
 
Again, thank you for the help with improving this wiki.
 
Version 2.0 has been completed! If everyone is satisfied with this version, this should be usable.

Edit: Thanks goes out to everyone who has helped out so far, the staff who have overseen this process, and especially to Darkanine for all of his aid. This would not have made it to this point without all of your contributions.

Honestly this thing is my lovechild; I have spent many, many hours gathering all the sources, composing, compiling, and writing this. I hope it is satisfactory to everyone who put stock in me doing this.
 
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