Discordian Magic Squares! (anyone know how to make tables show their lines?)

[Lies]

1	1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1	1	=5
1	1	1	1	1
1	1	1	1	1

8	11	3	1
2	2	7	12
3	5	9	6
10	5	4	4	=23

[Fredfredly ⊂(◉‿◉)つ]

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[Captain Utopia]

I'd do them in html, then load them into a browser, take a screenshot and post the image. You do know how to post images?

[LMNO]

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They add up to the same number in every row, column, and diagonal.  In this case, 5 and 23.

Lys, did you work out the 23 one yourself, or is there a program for that?

[LMNO]

[Triple Zero]

?????????????

They add up to the same number in every row, column, and diagonal.  In this case, 5 and 23.

Lys, did you work out the 23 one yourself, or is there a program for that?

Dunno about what Lys did, but I do know for a fact that there are programs for this. For some reason they are very popular example computer programs in books about computer programming.

If you look for combinations of the keywords "magic square", javascript, online you will probably find a few implementations. (the keyword Javascript is useful in this case because it means you get an instantaneous clientside solution instead of a (PHP, Perl) server script that needs the server roundtrip before it comes up with the answer and because it's a simple program clientside Javascript makes most sense. so there)

Funny thing, I always wondered what's up with these magic squares, cause I came across them again and again in all sorts of books about computer programming and algorithmics. And I wondered why. Other topics that often come up are sorting, prime numbers and the Fibonacci sequence. But these all made sense to me:
Sorting is useful because it's an actual task computers need to do often, and has various ways to implement it, but some are more efficient for certain cases than others.
Prime numbers are not particularly useful (except for cryptography, but those are mega super huge prime numbers requiring algorithms usually not covered in basic example code), but they play a pretty important part in Number theory, factoring, etc. Plus it's rather easy to write a program that poops out prime numbers, so it makes a good example, and there are efficient and less efficient ways to do it as well (so you can start with the easy less efficient program, and then introduce optimizations as exercises).
The Fibonacci sequence is mostly useless. No matter what pretty story you attach to them, how all these numbers show up in nature (and the DaVinci Code), but usually not accurately further than the first 10 of 20 or so, so that's no reason to write a computer program to generate them, right? Also the formula is so simple you can calculate them by head faster than you can write them on paper. But still, the fact that it is so simple makes it such an excellent program to write right after you got the hang of print "Hello world!". Added to that it makes a great starting point from which to explain a rather complex programming technique known as "recursion", it's not hard to image why Fibonacci (gesundheit!) features in most basic programming literature.

However, then there's magic squares. I don't see em that often anymore in modern entrance-level programming literature, but they were all over the old 80s and early 90s magazines with BASIC listings and such. I always wondered what's so special about them, they are squares and they add up with the same numbers in every direction, so what right? It's a bit like a puzzle, but then why aren't we programming Sudoku solvers (ok they werent well known in those times and are a bit more complex to write), but there are so many other mathematical number oddities (prime palindromes, perfect numbers, happy numbers, friendly numbers, amicable numbers, sociable numbers, srsly!), so why always these magic squares? Is everybody just copying of eachother?

But then (and I think LMNO will have been shouting the answer in his head to me for some paragraphs now ) I read some occult literature. It seems the magic squares were somehow connected with the Zodiac, and from there the numbers used in all sorts of calculations and connect-the-dots sigil scribery and what not.
Apparently, magic squares are quite hard to calculate by hand. Especially the larger ones. And because of this they were probably thought of as Great Secrets, cause without the proper magic square you couldnt summon or bind the proper demon and such.
So I guess, at least, when I first came across this use of magic squares in the occult, this sort of fell into place, that with the arrival of the home computer, the calculation of magic squares suddenly was a lot easier for your average chaos magician hacker geek .. and we all know by know how much intertwined these cultures are, so I guess it might have had something to do with that ...

[LMNO]

Yeah, that.

Which also opens the door for technomancy, computers as tools for higher plane magic, etc.

It's an extension on the old beliefs regarding the written word as a thing of power, et al.

[Lies]

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They add up to the same number in every row, column, and diagonal.  In this case, 5 and 23.

Lys, did you work out the 23 one yourself, or is there a program Skill for that?

[Reginald Ret]

i would like to state that numbers are weird.