Memes

45731 readers

534 users here now

Rules:

Be civil and nice.
Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

879

6÷2(1+2) (programming.dev)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by wischi to c/[email protected]

569 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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 :)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] SmartmanApps 1 points 8 months ago

implicit multiplication

There's no such thing as "implicit multiplication"

Some place it above explicit multiplication and division,

Which is correct, seeing as how we're solving brackets, and brackets always come first.

But if you place it as equal to it’s explicit counterparts, then you’d sweep left to right giving you an answer of 9

Which is wrong.

Since those are both valid interpretations of the order of operations

No, they're not. Treating brackets as, you know, brackets, is the only valid interpretation. "Multiplication" refers literally to multiplication signs, of which there are none in this problem.

But in reality nobody would write an equation like this

Yes they would. a(b+c) is the standard way to write a factorised term.