Current Events > This math problem (maffs if you're British) has twitter SHOOK. Can you solve it?

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EmuYsJHWEAA0n-e?format=jpg&name=900x900

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Enough of this garbage

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It concerns me whenever I see shit like this how people don't know basic order of operations
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the answer is the question is written badly

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SSJKirby posted...

the answer is the question is written badly

It's written fine, people are just dumb.
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It's Pikachu

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9, right

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Nah, it's sloppy notation. There's only one correct way to evaluate the expression, but it's not well-formatted.

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g0ldie posted...

9, right

Thats what I got.
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Corrupt_Power posted...

It's written fine, people are just dumb.

It's written poorly on purpose so nerds can go "WELL, ACKTUALLY"

6 / 2 * (1 + 2), mathematically, is the same as 6 / 2(1+2). But the removal of the * sign and the spaces will, conversationally, act as a faux set of parenthesis. If someone is learning English as a second language, they learn textbook English of "What are you going to do". And then we native speakers just spew out "whatcha gonna do" like its no big deal.

Anyone who's smug about it being 9 is the same asshole who drives the speed limit in the left hand lane.
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this shit should be an automatic banning at this point.

this. isn't. math.

it's trolling designed to look similar to math.

stop fucking falling for it.

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philsov posted...

It's written poorly on purpose so nerds can go "WELL, ACKTUALLY"

6 / 2 * (1 + 2), mathematically, is the same as 6 / 2(1+2). But the removal of the * sign and the spaces will, conversationally, act as a faux set of parenthesis. If someone is learning English as a second language, they learn textbook English of "What are you going to do". And then we native speakers just spew out "whatcha gonna do" like its no big deal.

Anyone who's smug about it being 9 is the same asshole who drives the speed limit in the left hand lane.

Are you saying the answer is not 9?

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philsov posted...

It's written poorly on purpose so nerds can go "WELL, ACKTUALLY"

6 / 2 * (1 + 2), mathematically, is the same as 6 / 2(1+2). But the removal of the * sign and the spaces will, conversationally, act as a faux set of parenthesis.

Yea no.

If I read this out loud, I would read it as "Six divided by two, multiplied by the quantity of one plus two, is nine"

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philsov posted...

It's written poorly on purpose so nerds can go "WELL, ACKTUALLY"

6 / 2 * (1 + 2), mathematically, is the same as 6 / 2(1+2). But the removal of the * sign and the spaces will, conversationally, act as a faux set of parenthesis. If someone is learning English as a second language, they learn textbook English of "What are you going to do". And then we native speakers just spew out "whatcha gonna do" like its no big deal.

Anyone who's smug about it being 9 is the same asshole who drives the speed limit in the left hand lane.

its written completely normally

normally a / symbol for division is what causes the argument, cause people argue that it could be a fraction, but literally notated this way there is one right answer and no other way to do it that is close to correct

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the only answer is "rewrite that in the proper syntax"

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It's 9, but people who can't do basic math will insist it's 1

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Goddammit, why do you people fall for this every single time

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cuh posted...

I feel like the answer is 9 though

It is. At a casual glance it's 1.

But being told it's a "SUPER HARD MATH QUESTION THAT CONFUSES A LOT OF PEOPLE" suddenly brings out all the armchair mathematicians who give it a harder look and realize it's 9 but poorly written. Without that heads up the failure rate would be much higher.
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This is a perfect example of math problems that are intentionally obtusely written in a way to generate artificial ambiguity so that DUMB people will argue with each other about the answer in the comments and generate attention / drive revenue toward the facebook page where it was posted.

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Wetterdew posted...

This is a perfect example of math problems that are intentionally obtusely written in a way to generate artificial ambiguity so that DUMB people will argue with each other about the answer in the comments and generate attention / drive revenue toward the facebook page where it was posted.

Like I already said, the answer is 69

Edit: Apparently I didn't already say that

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aw bugger it. I fink it's 1 if me maffs ain't right bollocks

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Accolon posted...

Enough of this garbage

at least it's not the "bananas" one.

There's no such thing as a "poorly written" problem when it's in that kind of format. >_>

It's poorly interpreted. End of story.

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ZMythos posted...

There's no such thing as a "poorly written" problem when it's in that kind of format. >_>

It's poorly interpreted. End of story.

Communicating poorly and then acting smug when you're misunderstood is not cleverness. It's literally obfuscated in an effort to generate meme page attention. If it was well written then there'd just be all of us sipping tea over it being 9, with no shaking
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Many years ago it was 1, but now due to snowflakes its 9.

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DuranOfForcena posted...

what is this supposed to mean

It means go back to your mathematical safe spaces, snow flakes.

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This is an ambiguous problem because no one actually writes math problems this way. It could be 9 or 1 depending on NECESSARY syntax that is left out.

However, if you enter this in a calculator as-is you will get 9

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philsov posted...

Communicating poorly and then acting smug when you're misunderstood is not cleverness. It's literally obfuscated in an effort to generate meme page attention. If it was well written then there'd just be all of us sipping tea over it being 9, with no shaking

Yep.

That's how they get people, they act like it's an intelligence thing but really it's an ambiguity thing.

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First you need to convert it to the complex plane, that's the first issue most people run into

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Damn_Underscore posted...

However, if you enter this in a calculator as-is you will get 9

So no "necessary syntax" was left out.

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philsov posted...

Communicating poorly and then acting smug when you're misunderstood is not cleverness. It's literally obfuscated in an effort to generate meme page attention. If it was well written then there'd just be all of us sipping tea over it being 9, with no shaking

The bottom line is that people were incorrectly taught the Order of Operations, which is why there's confusion in the first place.

There's no "it depends on how you read it." The answer is 9 and if you got anything else then you're in the group who was incorrectly taught.

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ZMythos posted...

So no "necessary syntax" was left out.

Wrong because a computer has to solve it one way or another.

If you were actually writing out that problem you would write it in one of these ways

6
-----
2(2+1)

or

6
----- * (2+1)
2

Because this clearly separates the numerator and denominator.

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Tbh this is nothing to get ass blasted over. Let the nerds have the satisfaction of being right, and we all know everybody presents actual math in a non meme format. Well, aside from the memes.

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Damn_Underscore posted...

Wrong because a computer has to solve it one way or another.

If you were actually writing out that problem you would write it in one of these ways

6
-----
2(2+1)

or

6
----- * (2+1)
2

Because this clearly separates the numerator and denominator.

There's no ambiguity. You do multiplication and division with equal priority from left to right. If you wanted to rewrite the division as a fraction, you would only ever write it as 6/3, then multiply by the sum

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ZMythos posted...

There's no ambiguity. You do multiplication and division with equal priority from left to right.

This is what computers do.

Mathematical rules only specify Parentheses over Exponents over Multiplication AND Division (which are inverses of each other) over Addition AND Subtraction (which are inverses of each other).

Going from left to right is only a convention and you must be more concrete than this if you're not using a computer and not just memeing. What if you are doing math in a language that is written from right to left?

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Damn_Underscore posted...

Going from left to right is only a convention and you must be more concrete than this if you're not using a computer and not just memeing. What if you are doing math in a language that is written from right to left?

Literally doesn't matter where you're from. Multiplication and division have equal priority from left to right.

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x = a/b(c+b) equals F. for failure. every time. it doesn't stop being wrong after you substitute for the variables.

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ZMythos posted...

Literally doesn't matter where you're from. Multiplication and division have equal priority from left to right.

Exactly, which is why it must be clear which one you are meant to do first.

A computer does everything from left to right because that is the convention. When we have the ability to be more expressive, we must be more clear.

Either use (parentheses) when using a / or just use a fraction line which acts like parentheses and separates different parts of the problem as desired

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ZMythos posted...

There's no ambiguity. You do multiplication and division with equal priority from left to right. If you wanted to rewrite the division as a fraction, you would only ever write it as 6/3, then multiply by the sum

You are exactly the type of person that these troll problems are made for lol

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Nah. It's written fine.

What are the arguments?
The division sign gets interpreted as a fraction? In TC's picture it is the literal division () sign. And even then in every day, especially digital, equation notation, "6 / 2" means six divided by two. Not six halfs.
"2(...)" somehow implies it gets calculated before the division. Uuuh, no. You should have learned before 7th grade that "2(...)" is equivalent to "2 * (...)".

Bottom line, the equation is not at fault because you don't remember remedial math.
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I should have made this into a poll

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This topic reminded me of this.

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Six divided by twice the sum of 1 and 2 is how Id end up reading it.

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It's 9. It's not even sloppy notation. This is basic ass PEDMAS.
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how can someone actually fuck this up? as long as you remember that anything within the () gets multiplied by whatever is outside it i cant see how this is hard.

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PEMDAS

6 2(1+2)
6 2(3)
6 6
1

Easy.

6 / 6 = 1

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