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.
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.
I originally had the same reasoning but came to the opposite conclusion. Multiplication and division have the same precedence, so I read the operations from left to right unless noted otherwise with parentheses. Thus:
6/2=3
3(1+2)=9
For me to read the whole of 2(1+2) as the denominator in a fraction I would expect it to be isolated in parentheses: 6/(2(1+2)).
Reading the blog post, I understand the ambiguity now, but i’m still fascinated that we had the same criticism (no parentheses implies intent) but had opposite conclusions.
You just did division before brackets, which goes against order of operations rules.
You just need to know The Distributive Law and Terms.
Read the linked article
The linked article is wrong. Read this - has, you know, actual Maths textbook references in it, unlike the article.