this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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6÷2(1+2) (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by wischi to c/[email protected]
 

https://zeta.one/viral-math/

I wrote a (very long) blog post about those viral math problems and am looking for feedback, especially from people who are not convinced that the problem is ambiguous.

It's about a 30min read so thank you in advance if you really take the time to read it, but I think it's worth it if you joined such discussions in the past, but I'm probably biased because I wrote it :)

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you are so sure that you are right and already “know it all”, why bother and even read this? There is no comment section to argue.

I beg to differ. You utter fool! You created a comment section yourself on lemmy and you are clearly wrong about everything!

You take the mean of 1 and 9 which is 4.5!

/j

[–] wischi 38 points 1 year ago (2 children)

🤣 I wasn't even sure if I should post it on lemmy. I mainly wrote it so I can post it under other peoples posts that actually are intended to artificially create drama to hopefully show enough people what the actual problems are with those puzzles.

But I probably am a fool and this is not going anywhere because most people won't read a 30min article about those math problems :-)

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Actually the correct answer is clearly 0.2609 if you follow the order of operations correctly:

6/2(1+2)
= 6/23
= 0.26

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Nah man, distribute the 2.
6/2(1+2)
= 6/2+4
= 3+4
= 7

This is like 4st grayed maff.

[–] wischi 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

🤣 I'm not sure if you read the post but I also wrote about that (the paragraph right before "What about the real world?")

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I did read the post (well done btw), but I guess I must have missed that. And here I thought I was a comedic genius

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

@relevants you truly are the smartest of all men

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

I did (skimmed it, at least) and I liked it. 🙃

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Right, because 5 rounds down to 4.5

[–] wischi 5 points 1 year ago

@Prunebutt meant 4.5! and not 4.5. Because it's not an integer we have to use the gamma function, the extension of the factorial function to get the actual mean between 1 and 9 => 4.5! = 52.3428 which looks about right 🤣

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not sure if sarcastic and woosh, or adding to the joke ಠ_ಠ

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think you got hit hard by Poe's Law here. Except it's more like people couldn't tell if you were jokingly or genuinely getting your math wrong... Even after you explained you were joking lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I thought the "/j" tone-tag was enough ;_;

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

If one doesn't realize you're op, the entire thing can be interpreted very differently.
Then "Not sure if sarcastic and woosh, or adding to the joke ಠ_ಠ" could be interpreted as something like "I'm not sure if you are adding to the joke and I'm not understanding it".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Stop it Patrick, you're scaring them!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

…Because 4 rounds up to 4.5