What is Arithmancy? | Harry Potter Explained 

Teacher: what’s 2+2? Me: HERMIONE GRANGER

"12 year old Harry, you can handle that basilisk, can't you?" I love your sense of humor

I absolutely love that Fred and George complete each other

“we found an arithmancy calculator online, and the fun part is you don’t have to do the math!” me: *paused video before this was revealed to do the math*

"Hermione has expressed open contempt for the subject of Divination, yet has also proclaimed that Arithmancy (in which numerology is prominent) is her favourite subject. While this may seem contradictory at first, it should be remembered that Arithmancy applies much more rigorous and mathematical approaches to predicting the future (which the scientifically-inclined Hermione would respond to), unlike Divination, which she detested because it seemed to be "a lot of guesswork." - Harry Potter wikia

I think Hermione’s character is so interesting, as she embodies each of the houses. She’s brave and courageous, very clever and good with riddles, extremely loyal and never leaves Harry’s side through it all & determined and ambitious. Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff & Slytherin

"A particular diagonal that all the numbers seemed to be allowed to land on" This can be explained using modular arithmetic. First of all, "reducing a number" results in 9 if the number is a multiple of 9, or otherwise, the remainder when that number is divided by 9 (e.g. 59 mod 9 = 5). In both cases the result is congruent to the original number (mod 9). Second, the character number is a combination of the heart number and the social number. Let C,H,S represent these three numbers respectively. Let V be the sum of the numbers for the vowels in your name and N be the sum of the consonants. Then we have C ≡ V+N (mod 9), H ≡ V (mod 9), and S ≡ N (mod 9). Therefore, C ≡ H+S (mod 9). Therefore, the character number is a function of the heart number and social number. So for any combination of the heart number and social number, there is only one possible character number.

I tried it out for myself. I had character:8 Heart:6 social:2 I read 8. It said I had the possibility of great success in business. I read 6. It said Most 6's are often unsuccessful at business. WHAT IS THIS

GOD, I just spent 10 minutes pausing and calculating my numbers but then you linked a website how dare you

When he said that Fred and Georege complete each other, I litterally started crying.😢

Wasn’t arithmancy described as very difficult though? This doesn’t seem that hard

I would like to point out that Nagini and wizard have the same score, so you guys predict her being a maladictus before you even knew it

It *is* pretty weird that nobody in Hogwarts takes any classes about nonmagical subjects. Math, Muggle history, literature*, science, English, foreign languages...it's just magic, magic, magic. *There doesn't seem to be a Wizarding Literature class, either...

Did you really have to include how Fred and George complete each other to make a 9? Because now I am back to mourning Fred.

Y'know, I wholeheartedly agree with Hermione being the giant squid..

This is literally the first time that I have heard any mention that J stands for Jonathan. The more you know. Love to the laugh track by the way. Love your videos guys!

I just thought Arithmancy was just hard and advanced math Also did you just call me a Muggle?!?!?!

1:14 DID YOU JUST ASSUME MY BLOOD STATUS?!

"Unless The Cursed Child is who turns into the giant squid who uses a time turner! No, no!" XDDD OML I couldn't stop laughing XDDD

I actually really like Arthminacy now that I know what it means

"...totally adds up." Was that your first official dad pun? :)

I'm a simple guy, I see Carlin Brothers and Harry Potter in the same notification, I click.

Dumbledore, quick to temper. “DidyouputyournameintheGobletOfFireHarry?”

I ran draco though and hes a 5 which is unstable, changing, and uncertain. That fits so perfectly im dying

In the fantasy genre, "-mancy" is a generic suffix denoting a type of magic, not specifically divination. So "arithmancy" is just "math magic".

1:15 did you just call me a muggle?

I imagine them sitting down on a couch putting in all these numbers to the calculators and being like "hey, guess who has the same score as hermione." "Who?" "Umbrige" "NO!"

I can't imagine Hermione actually finding value in Arithmancy if this were what the class entailed. I got the feeling that it might relate to devising formulas and equations that further the expansion of magic. I could see it as being a good combination with Alchemy which I'm sure would use Arithmancy to determine proper ratios of elements.

Numerology goes way deeper than just personality traits. Also, It's mentioned in the books that seven is a deeply magical number, when Dumbledore is talking about Voldemort's horcruxes and why he made seven. So i think that the class of Arithmancy is more like the 'scientific' side of magic, like understanding the hard logic behind magic, which would explain why Hermione loves the class but Harry and everyone else he knows has no interest in it. It's the technical side of magic.

In Dutch arithmancy was called "voorspellend rekenen". Translated this means predicting arithmatic. I thought it was about predicting what the outcomes of formulas would be so you wouldn't need to actually do math. Sounds much more useful..

I go by three names: ooi chien wen(my full name) , boon (my nickname) and tee (my thai name) Note: i am thai-malaysian-chinese

I just noticed that at 2:33, for 6's column it says fox

Believe it or not, I have studied numerology (purely for fun, of course), and, besides the fact that it's complete and utter nonsense, it isn't just about predicting the future: according to numerology, numbers have magical powers, and I think that arithmancy at Hogwarts is more about choosing the right number to better perform a spell: I remember a Chocolate Frog Card featuring the witch who discovered "the magical properties of the number 7", but, most importantly, Voldemort chose to create seven Horcruxes because it's the most powerful magical number.

1:14 I'm not a muggle I'm just waiting for my letter

Tried it myself character: 6 heart: 2 social: 4 my heart and social adds up which is weirdly satisfying

3:04 Funny note, in the cloning episode of gravity falls, Dipper pretends to be clone number 7, hm...

This video shows exactly why some people still believe in horoscopes. Arbitrary systems with a great number of variables will eventually produce some seemingly solid results.

After Umbridge takes over you can do every class as a muggle, not just a few (like artihmancy).

J: That you, a muggle, can actually do. Me: Did you just assume my magical identity! 😂😂😂

Character: 1 Heart: 4 Social: 6 So for my character it suits well, although I like people and am not a loner by choice. Heart suits perfectly as four, stability, down to earth, and especially the double up of 2's conflicts, that is very much the case. Finally, heart, this explains the disconnect from 1. Also I don't need a website to do the math, I love math, if I was a wizard in Harry Potter I'd probably enjoy Arithmancy and Astrology (Also I be the Slytherin)

2:03 Already starting with the dad jokes, ey? :p

I put my name through an got 779, the same as James potter, Voldemort, Umbridge, Olympe Maxime, polyjuice potion, death eaters, Gringotts Wizarding Bank, and my best friend's name Aedan. Edit: Also I just found out jake paul and Nazi have the same set of numbers: 514

1:14 Muggle?! I'm a pure blooded ravenclaw!

I ran my first name, got a 1 for my heart. Ran my first and last name... got a 1 for my heart. Ran my first, middle, and last name... got a 1 for my heart. #ForeverAlone

Maybe it's like the sacred geometry that underlies the workings of magic. It's how they know which spells are possible and how to go about inventing new ones.

"Derik, you don't happen to have a secret chamber somewhere in the office that we don't know about, do you?" That's what's behind the door. NEVER OPEN THE DOOR

so my score was character score: 9 heart score: 5 social score: 4 wait THEORY TIME 5 + 4 = 9 so MY HEART + SOCIAL = CHARACTER :O

I'm a 5 too. And I don't personally agree with half the stuff on that internet page BUT it could make for an interesting story...................

but if you calculate 'Ronald Weasley' instead of 'Ron Weasley' , then his character score is: 1, heart: 9 and social: 1. Umm.. I'll just believe Arithmancy is just like Divination, seeing I don't have to study any of it.

Not true, we could probably do muggle studies

I did the Dursleys Dudley: 4 Vernon: 3 Petunia: 1 Marge: 4 Dursley name: 5 4: Stability and firmness. Enjoys hard work. Practical, reliable, and down to earth. They prefer logic and reasoning to flights of fancy. Predictable, stubborn, suspicious overly practical and prone to angry. 3: Completeness and wholeness. Talent, energy, artistic nature, humor, and social ease. Successful, easy-going and lucky but also unfocused, superficial and easily offended. 1: independent, focused and determined. Leaders and inventors. Don’t like taking orders or working with others. Self-centered egotistical, and domineering. Usually loners. 5: instability and unbalanced. Conceited, irresponsible, quick to temper, and impatient. I did the math myself and I spend longer on this than I should’ve.

This is either a coincidence or Harry Potter is even more ridiculously well thought out than I already thought it was

DEREK WAS HIDING HIS SECRET CHAMBER IN *THE DOOR*

I pretty much just heard a bunch of numbers in this video. But i dont care, I see an upload, I watch, I like, I'm happy. :D

Pretty well sums up the problems with numerology. Best description ive heard is "pattern seeking with a desired outcome." Going past the fun the brothers are having with it and thinking about people who use this stuff religiously, look how often they switch between first names, first and last, and full names, mixing and matching them to find different numbers for the same idea/person. Throw in the fact that there are multiple systems for converting to numbers and you can switch between them until you find a connection that "proves" what you want

If you actually solve for the number of patterns, there are only 81 combinations

Wait. So if arithmancy is just about adding up the numbers associated with the letters of peoples names, how is there enough material to teach an entire class on it? Let alone multiple years worth of classes

I love how I sat here and added up like 10 peoples names before he said that there was a calculator...FML Lol

High School Math Teacher, so I'd like to think I'd totally teach Arithmancy at Hogwart! I think the reason why you found so many contradictions as well as things that make sense is because you were only looking at one number, the character number. To understand the whole person you have to acknowledge all of the persons numbers - these three as well as their life path number (the number based on their birthday) and there are many more numbers of less importance. AND... now wonder I'm such a fan I'm a Character 7, Heart 5, Social 2 too, lol

I did the numerology thing, and it was surprisingly accurate... I'm normally a skeptic, but that's pretty weird.

Helga Hufflepuff and Molly Weasley match also with "yo mama"

Hagrid and I have the same character numbers. That obviously means we should be best friends. That's all that I'm taking from this video

Am I the only one hearing Snape's voice when he tries to speak in British? 😂😂 Edit: its in 8:58

Arithmancy is my favorite class it sounds really fun

10:00 still a better story than the actual cursed child

I was playing around with the chart and inserted a character of my own making, Kendrix Jair Getsby. It described her eerily perfect. I'm saying spot on... This is scary.

That was literally one of the best hp videos I EVER SAW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you _so much_ ...but there's still a one thing i don't understand. What was so difficult about this subject, that hermione must read a half of the library to learn it?

I got Caracther: 3 Hearth: 9 Social: 3 It suits me pretty cool!!

arithmancy = number magic

Never got why Hermione doesn’t trust divination. It’s the WIZARDING world. Magic is pretty trustworthy. Her government literally has a whole archive of predictions that they use.

At hogwarts muggles could take astronomy, divination, and arithmancy and probably history of magic and muggle studies

"What are the chances of that?" Well there are 9 possibilities, so I'd say about 1 in 9

I got so into Arithmancy, I wrote down the list of people in my year to see who would match up >:3 TURNS OUT A FUNNY, TALL GUY WITH BLACK HAIR AND IS TONGAN HAS THE SAME CHARACTER, HEART AND SOCIAL NUMBERS AS A SHORT, BLONDE CUDDLY GIRL AND ITS ADDORABLE AND IM SHIPPING IT SO THANKS J FOR SHOWING US THIS

WHY WHY WHY! WHY does EVERYONE think that Ron should've been in Hufflepuff?! He's not loyal, not very hardworking, and DEFINITELY not patient, which are the main traits of the house.

I'm Character: 4 Heart: 3 Social: 1 And to be honest they're all right

Why does this suit me so well. I have a general personality in public, personality for school and one for friends and family. They all suit me incredibly well.

I always thought it was wizard math and that it would be the most boring and nonsense filled class (based on how their currency works) but then I realized that belonged to divination. (No offense Trelawny!)

The odds of any two random names coming out to the same character number is exactly 1.234...% (assuming "names" are random strings of letters; actual phonotactical restrictions in real names may change that).

About Arthur Weasley mixing up 5 and 20 on Muggle money: I don’t think it was that he was unfamiliar with numbers. Rather, as he had no/limited experience with the currency, he had a hard time finding where the denominations were marked ON the currency.

late to the party and maybe someone pointed it out already but i just didnt see it. You can only have this many combinations because the overall score is directly dependent on the 2 others. The diagonal pattern you noticed is to be expected, since the letters of the name are perfectly divided up in those 2 groups (heart/social). Since there is no other factor (like position within the word and such) but only the equivalent value in the chart i m pretty sure that the overall score is always the cross sum of the heart plus social score. So you actually only have (even lower as you said) 81 potential combinations, since as you pointed out 0 is not a possible cross sum (99 combinations minus {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90}). Either way it is way to simple for something to be teached all year.

Fyi I'm pretty sure the ridiculous wizard money system is at least slightly based on the old British money system (shillings etc) which jk would have grown up with.

Did you know? Newt Scamander and Tina Goldstein have the same Character, Heart and Social numbers (in the order 532). My best friend and I found it crazy and even checked on paper.

What you are describing, applying Arithmancy to a person's name is actually called, Onomancy, which is very simplistic. Actual Arithmancy is like delving down a rabbit hole, but ancient scholars used it for 'conjuring' spirits and creating spells. Bill Weasley actually had to master it to become a Curse Breaker. That would actually make more sense in the HP universe. Otherwise, it would just be another form of Divination taught by Professor Trelawney.

Actually, I am writing a book and all three of my supposed "names" tie in perfectly. I mean perfectly.

I've never got how Muggle Studies worked and we never heard a lot about it in the books...do they actually use computers? Love to get a video on this because you guys explain everything so well 😌

Mathematics? More like... _Math-e-Magic!_ *_AMIRITE?!_* ...No, don't get up; I'll escort myself out.

Ok it's freaky how perfect my arithmancy predictions are

This is it. The first video of SCB I ever saw. 2 years later and they are still kicking it with the Harry Potter theories.

Each score adds up to only one result, the next score will move the result one up or down, because it was 9 then 10. What you really have found is that almost all the scores are there, which are possible and they add up to everything you want them to. :)

"I Am Lord Voldemort" and "Numerology and Grammatica" both have 761

me: pauses the video to do all the maths for my name, *then plays video* "well the good news is we have found an arithmancy calculator online so you don't have to do the math!!! " me: "ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!! I JUST SPENT AGES ADDING UP MY LONG NAME AND NOW YOU TELL ME YOU HAVE A CALCULATOR!!!" my mum: "are you ok?"

Fun fact, you can easily tell when numbers like 51 are not prime because all multiples of 3 can have their digits added together into another multiple of 3. So 5+1 is 6, 753 you can see 7+5+3 is 15 which can be divided by 3, and so on and so forth

51 is divisible by 3 lol

So you can make your child be a certain way by naming them a certain way

Molly Weasley sharing compatibility with Helga Hufflepuff actually makes total sense. I don't know much about the Prewitt family's origins, but if you told me that Molly Weasley was the Heir of Hufflepuff, I'd be all like "yeah, I buy that."

⚠️ LONG COMMENT⚠️ I think there's a lot of esoterical inspiration in Harry Potter. I mean, Joan Rowling was born on July (7th month in the solar calendar.) She's a Leo and also Harry. But what's wild is that Daniel Radcliffe is also a Leo. He was born July 23rd (it's a Leo in most countries but in some he's a cancer (pls, don't mind me, I'm an skeptical zodiac freak)). Do you think that's a coincidence? I don't think so. Haha. Also the 4 founders seem to also follow some sort of esoteric order. Like Hufflepuff is earth, Reavenclaw is air, Slytherin is water and Griffindor is fire. The Griffindor animal is a lion and also dragons are related to the sign of Leo. So there's a lot of dragons and mystic animals in the series that have some sort of relation to either dragons of lions (griffins, sphinx, hypogrifs...) Also the colors for Griffindor are color mostly associated with the star sign, such as red and gold and the stone rubies. There are 7 school years, 7 horcruxes, at 17 you're an adult as a wizard. There's also some religious references like resurrection (stone)😊7, the lion defeating the snake (lion of Judah to the ancient snake) "good vs evil" true heir of the Griffindor (sword) (Harry) vs True heir of Slytherin (Tom Marvolo Riddle Gaunt). Trilogies (the holy Trinity) such as 3 brothers (Peverels) creating 3 deadly hallows (wand, stone, cloak (this resembles 3 relics of Christ which are spear that pieced him before dying, the stone removed from the tomb, which marks his resurrection and the Turin shroud) and of course, the golden trio, Harry, Ron and Hermione. I'll stop it here but these are the little references to JKR herself and Harry and Griffindor. Too many more for Hermione, Ron and the rest. But well, I've already said too much. I love Carlin brothers. ❤

Your Greek just killed me XD Love from Greece

wit all those 999s do you maybe think JK was just trying to call the police??

Wow. The real-life counterpart of it is EVEN WORSE than horoscopes et cetera. That's mildly impressive.

716, both my character and social numbers seem to make a lot of sense, but I'm doubtful about my heart number, maybe I don't know myself quite well hahahahahaha