I noticed that ability scores and the modifiers are different, but I know they relate to each other. How are ability modifiers calculated?
First time player in a group figuring out things as we all go.  I just hit level four as a Ranger, and I get to improve one ability score of my choice by 2, or I can increase two ability scores of my choice by 1.  My first thought was Strength, as I've been rocking a score of 11 with a mod of +0 so far. But I read that Rangers use (wisdom mod + 10) for their spell casting modifier. Currently my wisdom is 13, with a mod of +1. If I increase either STR or WIS, will the modifier increase as well? How and why?  A Monk in our party went from 9 CON to 11 during their ability score improvement, and by doing so their modifier went from −1 to 0.  We're all pretty new, so between eight people we're currently sharing one book, and all trying to locate our own copies for later campaigns. That's making it… inefficient for us to learn these things quickly.
Is this sentence grammatically correct?  Anyone who loves the English language should have a copy of this book in their bookcase.  or should it be:  Anyone who loves the English language should have a copy of this book in his or her bookcase. Posts linked in deleted answers still show up under "Linked" E.g. see . Consider the following code:  foo () {     echo $* }  bar () {     echo $@ }  foo 1 2 3 4 bar 1 2 3 4   It outputs:     1 2 3 4       1 2 3 4   I am using Ksh88, but I am interested in other common shells as well. If you happen to know any particularity for specific shells, please do mention them.  I found the follwing in the Ksh man page on Solaris:     The meaning of $* and  $@  is   identical  when  not  quoted  or  when  used  as a parameter   assignment value or as a file name. However, when used as  a   command argument, $* is equivalent to ``$1d$2d...'', where d   is the first character of the IFS variable,  whereas  $@  is   equivalent  to  $1 $2 ....   I tried modifying the IFS variable, but it doesn't modify the output. Maybe I'm doing something wrong? What is potential energy truly? Can i use the /testfor command to check for certain words in chat? I found "A sledgehammer to crack a nut" as one example. What are some others? How to avoid getting shocked by static electricity? sometimes I get "charged" and the next thing I touch something that conducts electricity such as a person, a car, a motal door, etc I get shocked by .  I'm trying to avoid this so if I suspect being "charged" I try to touch something that does not conduct electricity (such as a wooden table) as soon as possible, in the belief that this will "uncharge me".   Is it true that touching wood will uncharge you? How and when do I get charged? I noticed that it happens only in parts of the years, and after I get out of the car... Recommended books for advanced undergraduate electrodynamics What books are recommended for an advanced undergraduate course in electrodynamics? Is there any difference between Frequentist and Bayesian on the definition of Likelihood? Some sources say likelihood function is not conditional probability, some say it is. This is very confusing to me.  According to most sources I have seen, the likelihood of a distribution with parameter $\theta$, should be a product of probability mass functions given $n$ samples of $x_i$:  $$L(\theta) = L(x_1,x_2,...,x_n;\theta) = \prod_{i=1}^n p(x_i;\theta)$$  For example in Logistic Regression, we use an optimization algorithm to maximize the likelihood function (Maximum Likelihood Estimation) to obtain the optimal parameters and therefore the final LR model. Given the $n$ training samples, which we assume to be independent from each other, we want to maximize the product of probabilities (or the joint probability mass functions). This seems quite obvious to me.  According to , "likelihood is not a probability and it is not a conditional probability". It also mentioned, "likelihood is a conditional probability only in Bayesian understanding of likelihood, i.e., if you assume that $\theta$ is a random variable."  I read about the different perspectives of treating a learning problem between frequentist and Bayesian.   According to a source, for Bayesian inference, we have a priori $P(\theta)$, likelihood $P(X|\theta)$, and we want to obtain the posterior $P(\theta|X)$, using Bayesian theorem:  $$P(\theta|X)=\dfrac{P(X|\theta) \times P(\theta)}{P(X)}$$   I'm not familiar with Bayesian Inference. How come $P(X|\theta)$ which is the distribution of the observed data conditional on its parameters, is also termed the likelihood? In , it says sometimes it is written $L(\theta|X)=p(X|\theta)$. What does this mean?  is there a difference between Frequentist and Bayesian's definitions on likelihood??  Thanks.    EDIT:  There are different ways of interpreting Bayes' theorem - Bayesian interpretation and Frequentist interpretation (See: ). How to install Telegram Ackermann function - how to calculate the number of times it calls itself Purely for my own amusement I've been playing around with the .  The Ackermann function is a non primitive recursive function defined on non-negative integers by:  $A(m,n) = n+1$, if $m=0$  $A(m,n) = A(m-1,1)$, if $m&gt;0$ and $n=0$  $A(m,n) = A(m-1,A(m,n-1))$, if $m&gt;0$ and $n&gt;0$  I'm not interested in values of the function itself, rather I'm interested in the number of recursions the function takes to arrive at a value. For example:  $A(1,2) = A(0,A(1,1)) = A(0,A(0,A(1,0))) = A(0,A(0,A(0,1))) = A(0,A(0,2)) = A(0,3) = 4$  That's 6 steps, so if we define $RA(m,n)$ as the number of recursions to calculate $A(m,n)$, then $RA(1,2) = 6$.  I made a short Excel macro to calculate $RA(m,n)$ for any given $m$ and $n$. The problem I have is that $RA(m,n)$ grows even faster than $A(m,n)$ and I quickly run out of stackspace. The table below shows $RA(m,n)$ for very small values of $m$ and $n$. The numbers shown for $RA(3,10)$ and $RA(4,1)$ are the number of steps before crashing!    A formula for $RA(1,n)$ is trivial, and it is relatively easy to see that $RA(2,n) = 5(n+1) + 4n(n+1)/2$.  So my questions: can anyone see an explicit formula for $RA(3,n)$? More generally, does a formula exist for $RA(m,n)$, in the same way that $A(m,n)$ can be expressed using Knuth arrows?   For the low values shown of $m$ and $n$, $RA(m,n)$ looks about order of magnitude larger than $A(m,n)$. Can we prove that $RA(m,n) &gt; A(m,n)$ for all $m,n$. Intuitively, it should be.  For bonus points, can $RA(m,n)$ be expressed in terms of $A(m,n)$? TSA lock reset button stuck and now lock button is also stuck Change the font of figure captions I would like to italicize my figure captions and make them smaller.  How can I do that? When I am faced with a simple linear congruence such as  $$9x \equiv 7 \pmod{13}$$ and I am working without any calculating aid handy, I tend to do something like the following:  "Notice" that adding $13$ on the right and subtracting $13x$ on the left gives: $$-4x \equiv 20 \pmod{13}$$  so that $$x \equiv -5 \equiv 8 \pmod{13}.$$  Clearly this process works and is easy to justify (apart from not having an algorithm for "noticing"), but my question is this: I have a vague recollection of reading somewhere this sort of process was the preferred method of C. F. Gauss, but I cannot find any evidence for this now, so does anyone know anything about this, or could provide a reference? (Or have I just imagined it all?)  I would also be interested to hear if anyone else does anything similar. How to copy modifiers with attribute values from active object to selected objects with python scripting? When the ball is being bounced by the goalkeeper from his hands and a player steals it without touching the goalkeeper (while the goalkeeper is not touching the ball) and scores, is it legal or not?   shows what I'm talking about. Cannot make a static reference to the non-static method Intuitive/direct proof that a rectangle partitioned into rectangles each with at least one integer side must itself have an integer side A challenge problem asked to show that if rectangle $R$ with axis-parallel sides is partitioned into finitely many subrectangles $R_1,R_2,\ldots,R_n$ (also with axis-parallel sides), such that each $R_i$ has at least one integer side length, then $R$ must also have at least one integer side length. The only proof I've seen, although simple, is quite unintuitive. Namely you look at the integral  $$ \int_R e^{2 \pi i (x+y)} dx dy $$ and note that the integral is $0$ if and only if $R$ has an integer side length, and then note that by assumption the integral is $0$ over all the $R_i$, hence summing the integral over all $R_i$ gives that the integral is also $0$ over $R$. Can someone give a more direct/intuitive argument that doesn't use voodoo like a complex-valued integral? How can I make an X-Y scatter plot with histograms next to the X-Y axes? Seems like a bug:  The user:   Edits a question Then, he decide to close it. Clicks on the Close button. The popup doesn't appear. Refreshes the page. Click on the close button. The popup appears.   After editing in the link appears a hash: #. But I don't think that this is the problem because if I add the hash without editing the close popup appears.  It's minor, but I think that is good to be reported and solved.  Edit: The close popup doesn't open after we click an edit has been made to this post; click to load.