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Mistake the Division symbol for a subtraction symbol?
That would make his version of events
8 - 2 = 6
6 x 2 = 12
12 + 2 = 14
Edit: Guys I KNOW it’s still wrong. I’m just spit balling a way for a really dumb person to get 14.
Fucking Hell……put your red pens down, and leave my inbox alone.
My son has dyscalculia (dyslexia for math, for those who've never heard of it) and he'd mistake the symbols a lot. He started using color coding so he could highlight each symbol before he got started. Anyways, your comment made me think of how quickly someone can get to a very random answer.
Me too, and it wasn’t diagnosed until I was in my 40’s. Undiagnosed learning disabilities can really make a person feel stupid.
My son also has dyscalculia. It’s been very difficult to get him tested, but we did get a 504 education plan for him.
He just completed his last required high school math course, and it’s such a huge relief to both of us!
Fun fact, substantial percentage of people with ADHD are also experiencing dyslexia/dyscalculia, so make sure you won’t miss symptoms! It’s more to it than hyperactivity, which isn’t even necessary!
:edit: missed your next comment down the chain, nevermind! 😅
No worries. We're a household full of adhd havers who don't fit the symptoms properly. It's also a problem that adhd isn't well researched for anyone other than a certain age range of males. I often tell people that "hyperactivity" for me (I'm a cis woman, for context) and some others are things like nail biting, restlessness by tapping or swaying, etc. Essentially, I'd say a lot of older cis women who were not allowed to be raised under the "boys get to be active" learned hyperactivity coping mechanics that are less obvious. Even daydreaming, which seems to be a "girl problem" is sometimes associated with adhd symptoms unique to those assigned female at birth.
Along with that, we all seem to have processing issues, even though only my has the reading and math related diagnosis. And I think for each of us, it's associated with different things. Like, it might be due to the dyslexia for my youngest, due to autism spectrum for my oldest, and ESL issues for me...but also, it can all relate back to adhd, too. Either way, we keep the captions on our t.v. all the time.
Yeah I was going for more generalized initial “ADHD is not just boys running on the walls” comment.
The only thing I maybe would like to add to your response that shows your true awareness and interest on the subject (I’m really glad y’all are handling this!) is the fact that - while undeniably there is correlation - biological sex and upbringing are not sole factor regarding the “type” or “ways” of ADHD that one “gets”, writing this as cis male with 100% inattentive ADHD whose father would love nothing more than for me to be hyperactive at least a little bit, and glue me off the desk 🤣 but that note is mostly to others that may read this comment chain I have no doubt you already knew!
If I may pry, how did you guys notice AuDHD in your oldest? I will go on full disclosure, I’m not well versed in what autism be.
Hang on a sec… if the division were mistaken for a subtraction symbol, then they would also have to not know the order of operation to make it 14.
What am I saying they don’t know the order of operation.
I When I was growing up (Canada), we were taught BEDMAS Bracket Exponent Division Multiplication Addition Subtraction. It’s like the mitochondria of math.
If you were taught PEMDAS (USA) in school or BEDMAS (Europe) wouldn’t you get two different answers to this equation?
PEMDAS has you do the parenthesis (P) and then do multiplications (M)
BEDMAS has you do the bracket (B) then do division (D)
Multiplication/division and addition/subtraction are meant to take the same spot because they are just the inverse of each other. What's important is that parenthesis are solved first, then indices, then multiplicative functions, then additive functions. But they're separated because this is taught to kids in year three and it doesn't need to be more complex at that age.
There is a small problem with PEMDAS tho because multiplication and division have the same priority because they are opposites but because of PEMDAS people often say first multiply then divide which is wrong
The second time in my education we went over PEMDAS it was presented as P E M/D A/S and we were told to do M/D and A/S left to right as needed then I grew up and realized not many people got that lesson. And I'm still not great at math and usually need pencil and paper, but I can definitely do problems like this.
Weirdly enough, I don’t remember learning that you do multiplication/division and addition/subtraction left to right when I was in middle and high school. I always thought PEMDAS was the actual order. It wasn’t until I got to college that I learned and I felt had been lied to.
I was never taught PEMDAS. It has never made much sense to me.
From Wikipedia: Mnemonic acronyms have been criticized for not developing a conceptual understanding of the order of operations, and not addressing student questions about its purpose or flexibility.Students learning the order of operations via mnemonic acronyms routinely make mistakes, as do some pre-service teachers. Even when students correctly learn the acronym, a disproportionate focus on memorization of trivia crowds out substantive mathematical content.
These mnemonics may be misleading when written this way. For example, misinterpreting any of the above rules to mean "addition first, subtraction afterward" would incorrectly evaluate the expression *a-b+c* as *a-(b+c)* , while the correct evaluation is *(a-b)+c* . These values are different when c=/=0.
No one EVER attempted to teach me any reason for the order of operations.
My masters degree required me to complete college calculus (which was extremely difficult due to dyscalculia.)
To this day, I have no idea if the order of operations is due to something innate about maths, or if it’s simply a cultural convention.
Tbh, the question had never occurred to me before reading your comment. Thank you for prompting the question!
It is just a convention most people agree on just to make communicating math easier. There are other conventions not everyone follows. For instance, implicit multiplication can have higher precedence than normal multiplication. But not everyone follows that rule, so problems like in the op will cause confusion since there is no context to figure it out.
Was taught it in the uk as BODMAS
Brackets, orders, division, multiplication, addition and subtraction
I believe BIDMAS is used in UK primary schools I meaning indices rather than order
BEDMAS is the Canadian way i think
Fundementally they all mean the same thing
That doesn't answer the question, though. The real question is whether:
2(4)
Is the same as
2 × 4
If it is, then 8÷2×4 = 4×4 =16
But, if it's not the same then
8÷2(4) = 8÷8 = 1
Scholars disagree on this question so they're are potentially 2 correct answers.
8 is the numerator, 2(2+2) is the denominator. There is no true confusion or scholarly disagreement here, the division operator just shouldn’t be used like this because people don’t understand what it means.
It is okay to use either operator, however, they aren't interchangeable. If the problem uses ÷, then you have to use the rules of ÷. If it uses / (known as a [vinculum](http://www.amathsdictionaryforkids.com/qr/v/vinculum.html)), then you have to use / and use the rules of /. The former means "divide by order of operations" while the latter means "divide after simplifying both sides of the sign".
What you are describing is vinculum, however the sign in the problem isn't a vinculum, so you can't use it as such .
I'm a math teacher and my professors in my graduate program always said better to have to Many parenthesis than not enough. You my friend have engaged my noggin today.
Yeah honestly it makes me angry as a math teacher that they teach them that symbol when they will never see it after primary school (and for good reason). It shows how trash our education system is because anyone who knows anything about math would get it, but our curriculum developers/politicians don’t understand high school math either
I feel like there's value in it in the very early stages because when you're literally still teaching what division is, having one of the four basic operations look completely different from the others might make things harder than they need to be for the kids.
Yeah, this is meant to be intentionally confusing due to the division symbol. I can see the argument for it being 16, and the argument for it being 1.
It’s kind of wild that we use it at all. Maybe it’s because when kids are young enough and just learning fractions that it’s all they can handle?
The only thing that trips me up on these equations is the number up against the front parentheses, indicating multiplication. I was taught that due to the distributive property, this is a "part of" the parentheses operation of PEMDAS. But I've been told I'm wrong in that assumption.
I was taught the same thing.
8 ÷ 2 × (2+2) would be read as 8 divided by 2 and then times (2+2) -> 4 times 4 -> 16
Whereas
8 ÷ 2(2+2) would be read as 8 divided by twice (2+2) -> 8 divided by 8 -> 1
This is the way. I’m a math major, used to argue by BEDMAS (or PEMDAS) it should be 16, but then learned later on that BEDMAS, while convention, can be interpreted somewhat arbitrarily and that in “real” math you’d just write it in such a way that you would avoid ambiguity in the first place.
With that being said, if applying BEDMAS or PEMDAS as generally taught in school, where division/multiplication are done together, left to right (same with addition/subtraction), because they are commutative, I would say the most common answer would be 16, and folks getting 1 are forgetting that principal.
But it’s just a hell of a lot easier to write 8/(2(2+2)) or (8/2)(2+2) to avoid the issue altogether.
i was just going off the rule of parentheses, so after i put 2(2×2) under the division mark, then i'd do the parentheses, so 2×2 + 2×2
which gives me 8÷8=1
but yea left to right you'd end with 4(2+2) which is 16
The issue is that people think that PEMDAS is the end all be all because they didn't go further and learn more complicated operations. Later on, you learn the concept of multiplication by juxtaposition aka implicit multiplication. It has precedence over regular multiplication and division.
Therefore, when you have ab/xy. You treat it like (ab)/(xy) and not a(b/x)y.
So in this case, the implicit multiplication of 2(2+2) is done before the division and you get 1.
Every other week this stupid post comes up somewhere. Some people love Pemdas and in reality.. we use fractions so this ambiguity never shows up.. it’s a convention for poor notation and honestly I don’t see it’s worth in being taught at all.
Maths degree here. Whether you evaluate this as 1 or 16 depends on if you count writing a number outside a bracket counts as a higher level of priority than multiplying or dividing. Traditionally not, but with computer science it’s changed recently. Regardless it’s not a maths problem. Any decent mathematical notation would write it as a fraction with numerator and denominator clear.
If a programmer wanted a specific order to get to 1, they would write it explicitly. So for example (8 / (2 *(2+2))) = 1. However to get 16 they would probably write 8 / 2 * (2+2) = 16, which isn’t as heavy on parenthesis but I would expect most languages to honor order of ops like normal, left to right. I just ran a C# test for the second one and it is indeed 16.
Good practice for math is to leave things as unambiguous in code as possible, typically that means extreme use of parenthesis to absolutely ensure execution order especially in the case of complex formulas.
And this is why Im glad im in a non STEM career so that I dont have to worry about whether the answer is 16 or 1.
EDIT: After reading the comments, just confirms that I'm glad I have a career in the less vague field of Marketing and Advertising.... (and yes since this is reddit, my edit was meant as a joke)
You would never see this in a stem career. No one is going to write an equation that is ambiguous outside of a dumb meme post. If it were necessary for you to use this for something it would be written as a fraction that made it clear what was meant to be in the denominator.
It was explicitly explained to us in our first engineering class that writing an ambitious equation is worse than writing an incorrect equation, since it could get past peer checks and someone later on could misinterpret it and get a wildly different result.
Absolutely nobody warned us in my undergrad (physics/EE double major).
Shit got too complicated to use arbitrary notation anymore.
I also switched to the HP 42 for a few reasons. You literally can't use this kind of notation in that calculator.
this is a gotcha meme purposely written poorly to cause confusion for the clicks. the writer of the equation has the responsibility to make the equation unmistakably clear. to goal of the mathematician is to convey an idea clearly, not confuse everyone.
My dumbass STEM mind had to really try to get that 16, it refused to see anything that wasn't 1 (which is the correct answer, fight me)
I'm still working on getting 14, I'll let yall know if I figure it out
I read on a post about one of these problems that folks who’ve done more advanced math will usually get one answer, in this case, 1, because we’re taught to simplify expressions first. Otherwise, folks tend to see them only as multiplication and follow PEMDAS literally.
> 1 (which is the correct answer, fight me)
It's both. Implied multiplication can be taken to have a different precedence than explicit multiplication... and it DOES have different precedence on different calculators, which is why you'll get one answer on Casio, and a different answer on TI. I think the idea is that it's a function of the form f() where the function is 2, and the argument is (2+2). This has a higher precedence than division, so you do it first and get a final result of 1. If no distinction is made between implied and explicit multiplication, then the answer is 16.
If it were 8÷2×(2+2) it would be less ambiguous, but it should be written as a fraction anyway. In faction form, you'd be able to see if it was supposed to be 8/(2(2+2)) or (8/2)(2+2).
Okay where did people learn this PEDMAS, I’m in western Canada and learned BEDMAS
Edit: I do understand they are the exact same thing I was stating I learned BEDMAS in western Canada because I was interested in regional differences in the language. So I was trying to ask what area(s) people learned the version PEMDAS
As a Scotsman, let me mess with this more and tell you I learned about BOMDAS.
Brackets
Orders
Multiplication
Division
Addition
Subtraction
It's the same thing but I love how the acronym keeps changing
pedmas/pemdas=
parenthesis, exponents, division and multiplication left to right, addition and subtraction left to right
bedmas/bodmas/bemdas/bomdas=
brackets, exponents/orders, division and multiplication left to right, additional and subtraction left to right
Both are the same exact thing.
() are parentheses or round brackets.
[] are square brackets
{} are braces or curly brackets
<> are angle brackets
The default brackets people mean when using brackets are likely parentheses ().
Brackets is a better term for the order of operations as it covers more types than just parentheses. Sometimes () and [] are mixed for clarity.
() are brackets or round brackets, [] are square brackets, {} curly brackets. () and [] are interchangeable and kinda good to use when you have brackets nested inside a bracket.
I’m also in western Canada, I had some teachers say BEDMAS and some say PEMDAS, I think they were trying to phase it in or something.
I like pemdas just cause I’m picky about the parentheses () vs brackets [] distinction from computer science lol
BODMAS was taught to me in the 80’s Australia.
In practise I used BOMDAS since I programmed in assembly code using integers. It’s more lossy if you do the division first.
I learned PEMDAS and I’m in the midwestern U.S. can’t vouch for what the rest of the country learned but we were told to remember the acronym with purple-eyed monsters drink alphabet soup
Guys guys guys. The answer is both 1 and 16. Why? You may ask. Because the asshole who wrote this left the annotations ambiguous to cause conflict and get engagement. There are arguments for both. However, no real math question would be written like this.
Edit: god I can’t believe I have to explain this more, but because people are dumb and can’t think past 8th grade math.
According to the actual conventions, such ambiguous expressions shall be avoided. In particular, a division sign shall not be followed by a multiplication sign or another division sign on the same line unless parentheses are inserted to avoid any ambiguity.
This rule is used in The International System of Units (SI):
When several unit symbols are combined, care should be taken to avoid ambiguities, for example by using brackets or negative exponents. A solidus must not be used more than once in a given expression without brackets to remove ambiguities.
The same rule is used in the international Standard ISO 80000 Quantities and units, explicitly in Part 1 General but also in Part 2 Mathematical signs and symbols to be used in the natural sciences and technology and all other parts:
a solidus (/) shall not be followed by a multiplication sign or a division sign on the same line unless parentheses are inserted to avoid any ambiguity.
For example, write a/bc=abc=(a/b)/c=a/(bc), not a/b/c
This rule is also used in the German standard DIN 1338 Writing and typesetting of formulae
Therefore, it is not permissible to write your example as “8/2×(2+2)” since it could be read as 8/(2×4) or (8/2)×4.
I am not just making this up. These are mathematical standards. THE ORIGINAL POST IS ENGAGEMENT BAIT!!!!
Edit 2: YSU professor explaining why it’s both. https://ysu.edu/magazine/fall-2019/8-2-22
Edit 3: cause so many of you are idiots and just playing into the karma and engagement farming, screw it, it’s fucking 14.
2 being next to the bracket is an implied operator of the bracket in my mind, same as drawing a line under the bracket and putting a division there. So I’d complete that first. Given the use of basic multiplication and division signs, choosing not to use ‘ x ‘, it is deliberate.
It’s 1 in that case.
If it was 8 / 2 x (2+2), M & D have equal weighting so just go left to right.
But yeah, generally, writing stuff like this is shitty and is only there to troll people.
Yes, it's an implied multiplication. The question is does it get prioritized by being next to the parenthesis or deprioritized by being to the right. The whole ambiguity could be solved with additional parenthesis or by not using the ÷ symbol and by putting one expression over the other.
The implication of parentheses functioning as multiplication with the “operator” as you call it is classic algebra. Not sure what you’re talking about here.
The amount of people arguing under your answer makes me laugh. It's such a terrible question that even after you gave everyone the correct answer they are still arguing.
I love that answer, thank you! Instead of arguing over the result I can now simply say that the formula is illegal according to Germany industry standards.
Correct. The wiki on order of operations quotes this particular example too. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order\_of\_operations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations)
>This ambiguity has been the subject of [Internet memes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_meme) such as **"8 ÷ 2(2 + 2)", for which there are two conflicting interpretations: 8 ÷ \[2 · (2 + 2)\] = 1 and (8 ÷ 2) · (2 + 2) = 16.**[^(\[15\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations#cite_note-Strogatz-17)[^(\[19\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations#cite_note-Haelle-22) Mathematics education researcher Hung-Hsi Wu points out that "one never gets a computation of this type in real life", and calls such contrived examples "a kind of Gotcha! parlor game designed to trap an unsuspecting person by phrasing it in terms of a set of unreasonably convoluted rules."[^(\[12\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations#cite_note-Wu-14)
(Emphasis mine.)
These always just boil down to the fact that the math problem is really poorly written.
PEMDAS is not actually a thing any mathematician uses. If they were presented with an equation like this, they'd tell you to write it porperly before you present it.
It's unclear whether this says (8 / 2) × (2 + 2) or if it says 8 / (2 * (2 + 2)).
Each giving it's own result of either 4 × 4 = 16
Or 8 / 8 = 1
All of this is engagement bait. Purposefully ambiguous math problem where there are 2 options based on how you have learned to order division, followed by an insult with a clearly wrong answer.
It's deliberately ambiguous to spark controversy, most programming languages would give 16 as they do calculations left-to-right if the priority is the same (multiplication/division), but it's better to add more brackets.
Edit: just noticed the 14 and was like what???
I saw on one of these before that “juxtaposition” takes higher priority than multiplication. So…
8/2(2+2) -> 8/2(4) -> 8/8 -> 1
But
8/2*(2+2) -> 8/2*(4) -> 4*4 -> 16.
Juxtaposition is the implicit multiplication (no multiplication sign) vs explicit multiplication.
This inconsistency can be resolved by not using the stupid division symbol. You almost never encounter that symbol in algebra. As a math teacher I wish they would never use that symbol in elementary grades and just use fractions.
All the people in here shouting that iT's 1 bEcAuSe PeMdAs are obviously forgetting the caveat to PEMDAS that their teacher almost certainly told them in class - that multiply and division are done in order from left to right, even if multiply comes first in the acronym. Same goes for addition and subtraction.
If you interpret everything behind the ÷ as being in the denominator, then yes. And that's fine to do so. The person who created this math problem left the notation intentionally ambiguous.
Technically it is not ambiguous at all - juxtaposition or implied multiplication is the standard way to notate formula in physics, used by just about every textbook one gets in uni.
The unit without explicit operators is then evaluated first; resulting in the answer being 1
Wikipedia seems to back you up on this:
"Multiplication denoted by juxtaposition (also known as implied multiplication) creates a visual unit and has higher precedence than most other operations. In academic literature, when inline fractions are combined with implied multiplication without explicit parentheses, the multiplication is conventionally interpreted as having higher precedence than division, so that e.g. 1 / 2n is interpreted to mean 1 / (2 · n) rather than (1 / 2)"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations#Mixed_division_and_multiplication
(It also has this exact equation lower down in the article basically saying the equation is nonsense and different calculators will evaluate it differently)
This is the actual answer. Things can be written ambiguously. Not every “order of operations” you see will necessarily arrive at the same answer. Even when the rules are exactly followed.
Get 100 mathematicians in a room, and you'll get some supporting both answers. Another larger group will just give you side eye for not using correct notation. This problem uses ambiguous syntax than, frankly, isn't going to be used in any serious setting, typically not even beyond elementary school.
The distributive, commutative, and associative properties have to work here, noting that **"left to right" isn't actually a property of arithmetic**. We must also remember that division and multiplication have the same order or significance. Is "8÷2" grouped as one unit? It normally wouldn't be without, itself, being in parentheses. This is the entire reason why parentheses or brackets have priority over all other operations. But, some people suggest that the ÷ sign implies being a parenthetical unit in a way that the usual / or horizontal bar notation wouldn't.
* If 1 is the expected answer, then the commutative property yields (2+2)8÷2.
* If 16 is the expected answer, then the commutative property yields 8÷(2+2)2.
Here's the thing. Before the advent of the calculator, there was an understood answer here: 1 (which would agree with the minority in online arguments). I competed in calculator competitions back in the day and was first in district several years. That was the expected interpretation of this notation and was what we were taught to do. Calculators use algorithms to simplify math, but they also introduce some oddities. Not every calculator works the same, and some imply parentheses in places they shouldn't be. Using a calculator blindly would get you an answer that, for the purpose of the competition, was wrong. It's not the same exact equation as here, but the same format: [**note the exact same equation yielding different answers**](https://i.sstatic.net/DlcVB.png).
In any case, a Harvard professor of mathematics considers both to be acceptable interpretations of an ambiguous syntax, and he almost certainly knows more about what he's saying than the masses on social media.
More like get 100 mathematicians in a room and all 100 of them will tell you that's not how to write this problem out.
After that though, just for the fun of math they'd give you everything else you wrote.
It is 1. I keep hearing that it's ambiguous but never found it so myself. Juxtaposed multiplication implies higher precedence, usually. It's not very uncommon to see a one liner like ```x=a/2b``` in engineering research papers. And anyone looking at it would assume that it's 'a' divided by '2b', not 'a' divided by '2' then multiplied by 'b'.
Exactly. You'd end up with ab/2 and you'd fucking write it like that. Just people being dumb about how math with numbers comes from math with letters where the letters can't just walk all over the friggin equation because you wanna pretend to be math agnostic while doing math.
I m old, Gen X and I know that math is different now, (and so much longer) but hasn’t anyone else heard of this mnemonic device used in algebra to remember this. It’s
Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally
Or
PEMDAS for order of operations.
Correct me if iam wrong. I tried reading the comments but no one seems to have gotten to the answer of 1 the way I did. I used PEMDAS as well which would dictate that you solve the P first so it becomes 8 ÷2 (4) then 4 is an Exponent of 2 which then becomes 8 ÷ 8, since division is the only symbol left you would solve it for 1.
Parenthesis
Exponent
Multiplication
Division
Addition
Subtraction
Or am I hella fucked up?
The issue is that people never paid attention in math. They have "PEMDAS" in their minds while forgetting that it's multiplication OR division depending on whichever one comes first, left to right.
I was taught (P)(E)(MD)(AS)
Multiplication and Division were in the same group so that if you had just those two things left you just worked from left to right
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I just wanna know how they got 14? , I camt fuck up my math enough to figure out how to end at 14
Adding everything?
By god I think you got it
They did the math
*meth
no the meth is not the issue here, they just bad at math
They might be better with a little meth
Everything is better with a little meth. The problem is a little meth is never enough.
*They did the monster math*
It was a graveyard smath.
It caught on in a flath.
Who told Tyson he could sing in here?
Yes they did the math BUT it was the wrong math🙃
I have to assume this is the answer and the author is being sarcastic.
Thank you, my brain was hurting trying to figure that out as well.
Mistake the Division symbol for a subtraction symbol? That would make his version of events 8 - 2 = 6 6 x 2 = 12 12 + 2 = 14 Edit: Guys I KNOW it’s still wrong. I’m just spit balling a way for a really dumb person to get 14. Fucking Hell……put your red pens down, and leave my inbox alone.
Upvote for asking people to leave your inbox alone.
My son has dyscalculia (dyslexia for math, for those who've never heard of it) and he'd mistake the symbols a lot. He started using color coding so he could highlight each symbol before he got started. Anyways, your comment made me think of how quickly someone can get to a very random answer.
Hey I also have discalculia! Shit sucks! It’s cool that he’s found a way to help with it.
Me too, and it wasn’t diagnosed until I was in my 40’s. Undiagnosed learning disabilities can really make a person feel stupid. My son also has dyscalculia. It’s been very difficult to get him tested, but we did get a 504 education plan for him. He just completed his last required high school math course, and it’s such a huge relief to both of us!
Fun fact, substantial percentage of people with ADHD are also experiencing dyslexia/dyscalculia, so make sure you won’t miss symptoms! It’s more to it than hyperactivity, which isn’t even necessary! :edit: missed your next comment down the chain, nevermind! 😅
No worries. We're a household full of adhd havers who don't fit the symptoms properly. It's also a problem that adhd isn't well researched for anyone other than a certain age range of males. I often tell people that "hyperactivity" for me (I'm a cis woman, for context) and some others are things like nail biting, restlessness by tapping or swaying, etc. Essentially, I'd say a lot of older cis women who were not allowed to be raised under the "boys get to be active" learned hyperactivity coping mechanics that are less obvious. Even daydreaming, which seems to be a "girl problem" is sometimes associated with adhd symptoms unique to those assigned female at birth. Along with that, we all seem to have processing issues, even though only my has the reading and math related diagnosis. And I think for each of us, it's associated with different things. Like, it might be due to the dyslexia for my youngest, due to autism spectrum for my oldest, and ESL issues for me...but also, it can all relate back to adhd, too. Either way, we keep the captions on our t.v. all the time.
Yeah I was going for more generalized initial “ADHD is not just boys running on the walls” comment. The only thing I maybe would like to add to your response that shows your true awareness and interest on the subject (I’m really glad y’all are handling this!) is the fact that - while undeniably there is correlation - biological sex and upbringing are not sole factor regarding the “type” or “ways” of ADHD that one “gets”, writing this as cis male with 100% inattentive ADHD whose father would love nothing more than for me to be hyperactive at least a little bit, and glue me off the desk 🤣 but that note is mostly to others that may read this comment chain I have no doubt you already knew! If I may pry, how did you guys notice AuDHD in your oldest? I will go on full disclosure, I’m not well versed in what autism be.
Hang on a sec… if the division were mistaken for a subtraction symbol, then they would also have to not know the order of operation to make it 14. What am I saying they don’t know the order of operation.
Some Terrance Howard math
"I can't recreate the level of wrong they got while trying their best"
Please Excuse My Dumb Ass Students. Is something I like to remember.
PEMDAS is burned into my brain, but this is one of the best mnemonic devices I've ever seen. Edit: good thing we're talking math and not spelling...
It's BODMAS in the uk but my mind went to it immediately
I When I was growing up (Canada), we were taught BEDMAS Bracket Exponent Division Multiplication Addition Subtraction. It’s like the mitochondria of math.
Up the former colony’s! Learnt BEDMAS too in kiwi land lol
Australia too! I've never seen people mention BEDMAS on the internet.
If you were taught PEMDAS (USA) in school or BEDMAS (Europe) wouldn’t you get two different answers to this equation? PEMDAS has you do the parenthesis (P) and then do multiplications (M) BEDMAS has you do the bracket (B) then do division (D)
Multiplication/division and addition/subtraction are meant to take the same spot because they are just the inverse of each other. What's important is that parenthesis are solved first, then indices, then multiplicative functions, then additive functions. But they're separated because this is taught to kids in year three and it doesn't need to be more complex at that age.
As an American, the only BEDMAS I had to worry about was if I shit the bed.
Bedmas sounds like celebrating Christmas but staying in bed all day which my overtired ass finds to be the perfect holiday. 🫶
I was taught BEDMAS in Canada! (Brackets, exponents, division, multiplication, addition and subtraction)
upvote for my BODMAS crew
We had BIDMAS at our school but it's basically the same
> It's BODMAS in the uk Let's sing it together now! Barentheses! 👏 Oxponents! 👏 Dultiplication & Mivision! 👏 Addition & Subtraction! 👏👏
Brackets < Barentheses
Mnemonic. Something to do with a Greek goddess I think (mnemosyne?)
Mayonnaise - it’s an instrument
Okay, Patrick.
No, Patrick, mayonnaise is not an instrument. Horseradish isn't an instrument either.
I thought it has to do with a movie that had Keanu Reeves in it?
Speed?
pneumatic device... helps you pull memories from thin air
There is a small problem with PEMDAS tho because multiplication and division have the same priority because they are opposites but because of PEMDAS people often say first multiply then divide which is wrong
The second time in my education we went over PEMDAS it was presented as P E M/D A/S and we were told to do M/D and A/S left to right as needed then I grew up and realized not many people got that lesson. And I'm still not great at math and usually need pencil and paper, but I can definitely do problems like this.
Weirdly enough, I don’t remember learning that you do multiplication/division and addition/subtraction left to right when I was in middle and high school. I always thought PEMDAS was the actual order. It wasn’t until I got to college that I learned and I felt had been lied to.
I was never taught PEMDAS. It has never made much sense to me. From Wikipedia: Mnemonic acronyms have been criticized for not developing a conceptual understanding of the order of operations, and not addressing student questions about its purpose or flexibility.Students learning the order of operations via mnemonic acronyms routinely make mistakes, as do some pre-service teachers. Even when students correctly learn the acronym, a disproportionate focus on memorization of trivia crowds out substantive mathematical content. These mnemonics may be misleading when written this way. For example, misinterpreting any of the above rules to mean "addition first, subtraction afterward" would incorrectly evaluate the expression *a-b+c* as *a-(b+c)* , while the correct evaluation is *(a-b)+c* . These values are different when c=/=0.
No one EVER attempted to teach me any reason for the order of operations. My masters degree required me to complete college calculus (which was extremely difficult due to dyscalculia.) To this day, I have no idea if the order of operations is due to something innate about maths, or if it’s simply a cultural convention. Tbh, the question had never occurred to me before reading your comment. Thank you for prompting the question!
It is just a convention most people agree on just to make communicating math easier. There are other conventions not everyone follows. For instance, implicit multiplication can have higher precedence than normal multiplication. But not everyone follows that rule, so problems like in the op will cause confusion since there is no context to figure it out.
PEDMAS? I was taught BODMAS.
Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally...😊
I always wondered what Aunt Sally did that she needs to be excused from...
She knows what she did. So does the court system.
We don’t talk about Aunt Sally. And Bruno. We don’t talk about them.
We sing about not talking about Bruno to distract people from Sally…
The criminal justice system has a long memory Sally.
Probably posted some dumbass math
so its 1?
What? It's BEDMAS!
before everything, do meth and speed
Was taught it in the uk as BODMAS Brackets, orders, division, multiplication, addition and subtraction I believe BIDMAS is used in UK primary schools I meaning indices rather than order BEDMAS is the Canadian way i think Fundementally they all mean the same thing
My old boss was from Australia and used the BODMAS acronym
I'm Australian and learnt BEDMAS in the 80s. My kids, in a different state, learnt BOMDAS.
*BODMAS
OMG--I'm a math teacher and I LOVE THIS!!!!
That doesn't answer the question, though. The real question is whether: 2(4) Is the same as 2 × 4 If it is, then 8÷2×4 = 4×4 =16 But, if it's not the same then 8÷2(4) = 8÷8 = 1 Scholars disagree on this question so they're are potentially 2 correct answers.
8 is the numerator, 2(2+2) is the denominator. There is no true confusion or scholarly disagreement here, the division operator just shouldn’t be used like this because people don’t understand what it means.
Most of these “viral” maths problems seem to be down to ambiguous use of division symbols. They’re getting to be quite annoying
They're intentionally ambiguous to make people argue about them
It is okay to use either operator, however, they aren't interchangeable. If the problem uses ÷, then you have to use the rules of ÷. If it uses / (known as a [vinculum](http://www.amathsdictionaryforkids.com/qr/v/vinculum.html)), then you have to use / and use the rules of /. The former means "divide by order of operations" while the latter means "divide after simplifying both sides of the sign". What you are describing is vinculum, however the sign in the problem isn't a vinculum, so you can't use it as such .
This shit is why after like 4th grade you stop seeing ÷ at all
Exactly, I originally hated fractions but suddenly fractions made everything more easier after a certain period.
Yeah, it's much easier to follow the order when it's 8/2(2+2) than 8÷2(2+2). Edit: I mean (8/2)(2+2) not 8/[2(2+2)].
I'm a math teacher and my professors in my graduate program always said better to have to Many parenthesis than not enough. You my friend have engaged my noggin today.
"too many"\*
They said they were a math teacher, not an English teacher lol
Brother, the first one i would read as 8 over 2.(2+2)... So 1. Edit: how is this one of my most upvoted comments of all time and a medal???
Yeah, that's (as far as i'm aware) why the division symbol on computers is /
They really shouldn’t use it at all, get them used to seeing proper equations early on to lessen later confusion
Yeah honestly it makes me angry as a math teacher that they teach them that symbol when they will never see it after primary school (and for good reason). It shows how trash our education system is because anyone who knows anything about math would get it, but our curriculum developers/politicians don’t understand high school math either
I feel like there's value in it in the very early stages because when you're literally still teaching what division is, having one of the four basic operations look completely different from the others might make things harder than they need to be for the kids.
Yeah, this is meant to be intentionally confusing due to the division symbol. I can see the argument for it being 16, and the argument for it being 1. It’s kind of wild that we use it at all. Maybe it’s because when kids are young enough and just learning fractions that it’s all they can handle?
The only thing that trips me up on these equations is the number up against the front parentheses, indicating multiplication. I was taught that due to the distributive property, this is a "part of" the parentheses operation of PEMDAS. But I've been told I'm wrong in that assumption.
I was taught the same thing. 8 ÷ 2 × (2+2) would be read as 8 divided by 2 and then times (2+2) -> 4 times 4 -> 16 Whereas 8 ÷ 2(2+2) would be read as 8 divided by twice (2+2) -> 8 divided by 8 -> 1
The correct thing to teach would be to never write an equation as ambiguously as this. Here it's done purely as ragebait.
This is the way. I’m a math major, used to argue by BEDMAS (or PEMDAS) it should be 16, but then learned later on that BEDMAS, while convention, can be interpreted somewhat arbitrarily and that in “real” math you’d just write it in such a way that you would avoid ambiguity in the first place.
100%, this equations answer is both 16 and 1.
With that being said, if applying BEDMAS or PEMDAS as generally taught in school, where division/multiplication are done together, left to right (same with addition/subtraction), because they are commutative, I would say the most common answer would be 16, and folks getting 1 are forgetting that principal. But it’s just a hell of a lot easier to write 8/(2(2+2)) or (8/2)(2+2) to avoid the issue altogether.
i was just going off the rule of parentheses, so after i put 2(2×2) under the division mark, then i'd do the parentheses, so 2×2 + 2×2 which gives me 8÷8=1 but yea left to right you'd end with 4(2+2) which is 16
The issue is that people think that PEMDAS is the end all be all because they didn't go further and learn more complicated operations. Later on, you learn the concept of multiplication by juxtaposition aka implicit multiplication. It has precedence over regular multiplication and division. Therefore, when you have ab/xy. You treat it like (ab)/(xy) and not a(b/x)y. So in this case, the implicit multiplication of 2(2+2) is done before the division and you get 1.
The division symbol is nothing more than a representation of a fraction. Number to the left is the top dot, number to the right is the bottom dot.
This is exactly right and people blaming ÷ but saying / would solve it are just weird.
Every other week this stupid post comes up somewhere. Some people love Pemdas and in reality.. we use fractions so this ambiguity never shows up.. it’s a convention for poor notation and honestly I don’t see it’s worth in being taught at all.
Wow. I said brown…
We can count to Potatoe!
And where in that math problem was the word Ostrich, Mark?
you morans don't even know how to use ROYGBIV!
Richard of York gave battle in vain
If you use meth you'll get to 14.
The method
Maths degree here. Whether you evaluate this as 1 or 16 depends on if you count writing a number outside a bracket counts as a higher level of priority than multiplying or dividing. Traditionally not, but with computer science it’s changed recently. Regardless it’s not a maths problem. Any decent mathematical notation would write it as a fraction with numerator and denominator clear.
If a programmer wanted a specific order to get to 1, they would write it explicitly. So for example (8 / (2 *(2+2))) = 1. However to get 16 they would probably write 8 / 2 * (2+2) = 16, which isn’t as heavy on parenthesis but I would expect most languages to honor order of ops like normal, left to right. I just ran a C# test for the second one and it is indeed 16. Good practice for math is to leave things as unambiguous in code as possible, typically that means extreme use of parenthesis to absolutely ensure execution order especially in the case of complex formulas.
And this is why Im glad im in a non STEM career so that I dont have to worry about whether the answer is 16 or 1. EDIT: After reading the comments, just confirms that I'm glad I have a career in the less vague field of Marketing and Advertising.... (and yes since this is reddit, my edit was meant as a joke)
You would never see this in a stem career. No one is going to write an equation that is ambiguous outside of a dumb meme post. If it were necessary for you to use this for something it would be written as a fraction that made it clear what was meant to be in the denominator.
Yeah STEM is exactly where you learn not to write shit like this lmao
They don't even teach you. You just pick it up subconsciously because it's sink-or-swim in some of those classes.
It was explicitly explained to us in our first engineering class that writing an ambitious equation is worse than writing an incorrect equation, since it could get past peer checks and someone later on could misinterpret it and get a wildly different result.
Absolutely nobody warned us in my undergrad (physics/EE double major). Shit got too complicated to use arbitrary notation anymore. I also switched to the HP 42 for a few reasons. You literally can't use this kind of notation in that calculator.
this is a gotcha meme purposely written poorly to cause confusion for the clicks. the writer of the equation has the responsibility to make the equation unmistakably clear. to goal of the mathematician is to convey an idea clearly, not confuse everyone.
I am SO fucking sick of seeing these everywhere. How about they get rid of the damn ÷ sign and use fractions. But, that is how they get engagement.
Exactly, math isn't a task to solve, but a logic language. If a formula is unclear that just makes the creator a bad mathematician and communicator.
Im an engineer and haven’t seen an equation forma decade. This is just a post to make people with trivial knowledge feel smart
My dumbass STEM mind had to really try to get that 16, it refused to see anything that wasn't 1 (which is the correct answer, fight me) I'm still working on getting 14, I'll let yall know if I figure it out
I read on a post about one of these problems that folks who’ve done more advanced math will usually get one answer, in this case, 1, because we’re taught to simplify expressions first. Otherwise, folks tend to see them only as multiplication and follow PEMDAS literally.
> 1 (which is the correct answer, fight me) It's both. Implied multiplication can be taken to have a different precedence than explicit multiplication... and it DOES have different precedence on different calculators, which is why you'll get one answer on Casio, and a different answer on TI. I think the idea is that it's a function of the form f() where the function is 2, and the argument is (2+2). This has a higher precedence than division, so you do it first and get a final result of 1. If no distinction is made between implied and explicit multiplication, then the answer is 16. If it were 8÷2×(2+2) it would be less ambiguous, but it should be written as a fraction anyway. In faction form, you'd be able to see if it was supposed to be 8/(2(2+2)) or (8/2)(2+2).
This thread is eye opening lol.
Okay where did people learn this PEDMAS, I’m in western Canada and learned BEDMAS Edit: I do understand they are the exact same thing I was stating I learned BEDMAS in western Canada because I was interested in regional differences in the language. So I was trying to ask what area(s) people learned the version PEMDAS
As a Scotsman, let me mess with this more and tell you I learned about BOMDAS. Brackets Orders Multiplication Division Addition Subtraction It's the same thing but I love how the acronym keeps changing
BODMAS in India
I learned BIDMAS in several schools in England (2011-2016) ... replaced Order with Indices
Australia uses BOMDAS too.
I also learnt bidmas in aus as well
BODMAS in Australia for me
Yeah, I think they remembered it wrong - BODMAS aligns with the Division and Multiplication in the other acronyms.
That’s some BOMDAS math skills right there.
pedmas/pemdas= parenthesis, exponents, division and multiplication left to right, addition and subtraction left to right bedmas/bodmas/bemdas/bomdas= brackets, exponents/orders, division and multiplication left to right, additional and subtraction left to right Both are the same exact thing.
# BWAAAAAAAH 
Do they call these () brackets or do they use brackets \[\] where we'd use parentheses?
() are parentheses or round brackets. [] are square brackets {} are braces or curly brackets <> are angle brackets The default brackets people mean when using brackets are likely parentheses (). Brackets is a better term for the order of operations as it covers more types than just parentheses. Sometimes () and [] are mixed for clarity.
() are brackets or round brackets, [] are square brackets, {} curly brackets. () and [] are interchangeable and kinda good to use when you have brackets nested inside a bracket.
Yeah sorry I do understand it’s the same thing I was just curious about regional differences in the language of it
I’m also in western Canada, I had some teachers say BEDMAS and some say PEMDAS, I think they were trying to phase it in or something. I like pemdas just cause I’m picky about the parentheses () vs brackets [] distinction from computer science lol
PEMDAS learned it in elementary algebra I think.
We used bedmas in Ontario in the 1990’s
In Eastern Canada - also BEDMAS
BODMAS was taught to me in the 80’s Australia. In practise I used BOMDAS since I programmed in assembly code using integers. It’s more lossy if you do the division first.
I learned PEMDAS and I’m in the midwestern U.S. can’t vouch for what the rest of the country learned but we were told to remember the acronym with purple-eyed monsters drink alphabet soup
Ohio here. I was taught PEMDAS, too. My school used Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally as the saying.
Guys guys guys. The answer is both 1 and 16. Why? You may ask. Because the asshole who wrote this left the annotations ambiguous to cause conflict and get engagement. There are arguments for both. However, no real math question would be written like this. Edit: god I can’t believe I have to explain this more, but because people are dumb and can’t think past 8th grade math. According to the actual conventions, such ambiguous expressions shall be avoided. In particular, a division sign shall not be followed by a multiplication sign or another division sign on the same line unless parentheses are inserted to avoid any ambiguity. This rule is used in The International System of Units (SI): When several unit symbols are combined, care should be taken to avoid ambiguities, for example by using brackets or negative exponents. A solidus must not be used more than once in a given expression without brackets to remove ambiguities. The same rule is used in the international Standard ISO 80000 Quantities and units, explicitly in Part 1 General but also in Part 2 Mathematical signs and symbols to be used in the natural sciences and technology and all other parts: a solidus (/) shall not be followed by a multiplication sign or a division sign on the same line unless parentheses are inserted to avoid any ambiguity. For example, write a/bc=abc=(a/b)/c=a/(bc), not a/b/c This rule is also used in the German standard DIN 1338 Writing and typesetting of formulae Therefore, it is not permissible to write your example as “8/2×(2+2)” since it could be read as 8/(2×4) or (8/2)×4. I am not just making this up. These are mathematical standards. THE ORIGINAL POST IS ENGAGEMENT BAIT!!!! Edit 2: YSU professor explaining why it’s both. https://ysu.edu/magazine/fall-2019/8-2-22 Edit 3: cause so many of you are idiots and just playing into the karma and engagement farming, screw it, it’s fucking 14.
2 being next to the bracket is an implied operator of the bracket in my mind, same as drawing a line under the bracket and putting a division there. So I’d complete that first. Given the use of basic multiplication and division signs, choosing not to use ‘ x ‘, it is deliberate. It’s 1 in that case. If it was 8 / 2 x (2+2), M & D have equal weighting so just go left to right. But yeah, generally, writing stuff like this is shitty and is only there to troll people.
That's how I learned math. If I saw 2(4), it was the same as 2x4.
Yes, it's an implied multiplication. The question is does it get prioritized by being next to the parenthesis or deprioritized by being to the right. The whole ambiguity could be solved with additional parenthesis or by not using the ÷ symbol and by putting one expression over the other.
2(4) means 2x4, but are you giving them equal precedence? The point being made above is that 2(4) would be done first
That's how I was taught as well.. (...) meant multiply
The implication of parentheses functioning as multiplication with the “operator” as you call it is classic algebra. Not sure what you’re talking about here.
The amount of people arguing under your answer makes me laugh. It's such a terrible question that even after you gave everyone the correct answer they are still arguing.
I love that answer, thank you! Instead of arguing over the result I can now simply say that the formula is illegal according to Germany industry standards.
Correct. The wiki on order of operations quotes this particular example too. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order\_of\_operations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations) >This ambiguity has been the subject of [Internet memes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_meme) such as **"8 ÷ 2(2 + 2)", for which there are two conflicting interpretations: 8 ÷ \[2 · (2 + 2)\] = 1 and (8 ÷ 2) · (2 + 2) = 16.**[^(\[15\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations#cite_note-Strogatz-17)[^(\[19\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations#cite_note-Haelle-22) Mathematics education researcher Hung-Hsi Wu points out that "one never gets a computation of this type in real life", and calls such contrived examples "a kind of Gotcha! parlor game designed to trap an unsuspecting person by phrasing it in terms of a set of unreasonably convoluted rules."[^(\[12\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations#cite_note-Wu-14) (Emphasis mine.)
As a mathematician, I'm tired of these fucking facebook posts being treated like actual math.
8.5 +/- 7.5
schrödinger's math equation, it is both 1 and 16 because whoever wrote this left it ambiguous
These always just boil down to the fact that the math problem is really poorly written. PEMDAS is not actually a thing any mathematician uses. If they were presented with an equation like this, they'd tell you to write it porperly before you present it. It's unclear whether this says (8 / 2) × (2 + 2) or if it says 8 / (2 * (2 + 2)). Each giving it's own result of either 4 × 4 = 16 Or 8 / 8 = 1
100% — it’s about pissing you off on the internet.
1?
All of this is engagement bait. Purposefully ambiguous math problem where there are 2 options based on how you have learned to order division, followed by an insult with a clearly wrong answer.
The real question here is how someone gets 14!?
It's deliberately ambiguous to spark controversy, most programming languages would give 16 as they do calculations left-to-right if the priority is the same (multiplication/division), but it's better to add more brackets. Edit: just noticed the 14 and was like what???
I got 1.
Why isn't it 1?
I saw on one of these before that “juxtaposition” takes higher priority than multiplication. So… 8/2(2+2) -> 8/2(4) -> 8/8 -> 1 But 8/2*(2+2) -> 8/2*(4) -> 4*4 -> 16. Juxtaposition is the implicit multiplication (no multiplication sign) vs explicit multiplication.
This inconsistency can be resolved by not using the stupid division symbol. You almost never encounter that symbol in algebra. As a math teacher I wish they would never use that symbol in elementary grades and just use fractions.
If you look at the division symbol hard enough, you realize it is literally a symbolic fraction, where the dots are stand-ins for numbers.
It is simple math but it's written in a very unclear way that has different possible interpretations. It's basically rage baiting for math
All the people in here shouting that iT's 1 bEcAuSe PeMdAs are obviously forgetting the caveat to PEMDAS that their teacher almost certainly told them in class - that multiply and division are done in order from left to right, even if multiply comes first in the acronym. Same goes for addition and subtraction.
I want to say 1 but maybe I'm wrong
It is 1
Am I on crack? I think the answer is 1
I think that the best answer I've heard on these is that this is just a really crap way of presenting the question in the first place.
This is why teachers asked to show our work
Is it 1? Edit: Apparently it's 16. Go easy on me, lol. It's been 15 years since I've graduated and I haven't had to do PEMDAS since then
I thought it was 1 too.
If you interpret everything behind the ÷ as being in the denominator, then yes. And that's fine to do so. The person who created this math problem left the notation intentionally ambiguous.
Technically it is not ambiguous at all - juxtaposition or implied multiplication is the standard way to notate formula in physics, used by just about every textbook one gets in uni. The unit without explicit operators is then evaluated first; resulting in the answer being 1
Wikipedia seems to back you up on this: "Multiplication denoted by juxtaposition (also known as implied multiplication) creates a visual unit and has higher precedence than most other operations. In academic literature, when inline fractions are combined with implied multiplication without explicit parentheses, the multiplication is conventionally interpreted as having higher precedence than division, so that e.g. 1 / 2n is interpreted to mean 1 / (2 · n) rather than (1 / 2)" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations#Mixed_division_and_multiplication (It also has this exact equation lower down in the article basically saying the equation is nonsense and different calculators will evaluate it differently)
Fuck. Yes.
This is the actual answer. Things can be written ambiguously. Not every “order of operations” you see will necessarily arrive at the same answer. Even when the rules are exactly followed.
It's definitely 1
It is 1. Mathematician here. Putting the 2 in front of the parenthesis without a multiplication symbol “binds” the two together as a single unit.
On the ACT and SAT it's 1.
Yea that always fucked me, multiplying the numbers next to the parenthesis first, before going left to right. Always🦇
Get 100 mathematicians in a room, and you'll get some supporting both answers. Another larger group will just give you side eye for not using correct notation. This problem uses ambiguous syntax than, frankly, isn't going to be used in any serious setting, typically not even beyond elementary school. The distributive, commutative, and associative properties have to work here, noting that **"left to right" isn't actually a property of arithmetic**. We must also remember that division and multiplication have the same order or significance. Is "8÷2" grouped as one unit? It normally wouldn't be without, itself, being in parentheses. This is the entire reason why parentheses or brackets have priority over all other operations. But, some people suggest that the ÷ sign implies being a parenthetical unit in a way that the usual / or horizontal bar notation wouldn't. * If 1 is the expected answer, then the commutative property yields (2+2)8÷2. * If 16 is the expected answer, then the commutative property yields 8÷(2+2)2. Here's the thing. Before the advent of the calculator, there was an understood answer here: 1 (which would agree with the minority in online arguments). I competed in calculator competitions back in the day and was first in district several years. That was the expected interpretation of this notation and was what we were taught to do. Calculators use algorithms to simplify math, but they also introduce some oddities. Not every calculator works the same, and some imply parentheses in places they shouldn't be. Using a calculator blindly would get you an answer that, for the purpose of the competition, was wrong. It's not the same exact equation as here, but the same format: [**note the exact same equation yielding different answers**](https://i.sstatic.net/DlcVB.png). In any case, a Harvard professor of mathematics considers both to be acceptable interpretations of an ambiguous syntax, and he almost certainly knows more about what he's saying than the masses on social media.
More like get 100 mathematicians in a room and all 100 of them will tell you that's not how to write this problem out. After that though, just for the fun of math they'd give you everything else you wrote.
It is 1. I keep hearing that it's ambiguous but never found it so myself. Juxtaposed multiplication implies higher precedence, usually. It's not very uncommon to see a one liner like ```x=a/2b``` in engineering research papers. And anyone looking at it would assume that it's 'a' divided by '2b', not 'a' divided by '2' then multiplied by 'b'.
Exactly. You'd end up with ab/2 and you'd fucking write it like that. Just people being dumb about how math with numbers comes from math with letters where the letters can't just walk all over the friggin equation because you wanna pretend to be math agnostic while doing math.
I m old, Gen X and I know that math is different now, (and so much longer) but hasn’t anyone else heard of this mnemonic device used in algebra to remember this. It’s Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally Or PEMDAS for order of operations.
1 it's 1
16? 14? i got 1.
Correct me if iam wrong. I tried reading the comments but no one seems to have gotten to the answer of 1 the way I did. I used PEMDAS as well which would dictate that you solve the P first so it becomes 8 ÷2 (4) then 4 is an Exponent of 2 which then becomes 8 ÷ 8, since division is the only symbol left you would solve it for 1. Parenthesis Exponent Multiplication Division Addition Subtraction Or am I hella fucked up?
I pray to god that I still got it but this is 1 right? If not fml I'm dumber.
8/2(2+2). 8/2(4). 8/8. =1
pemdas baby
The issue is that people never paid attention in math. They have "PEMDAS" in their minds while forgetting that it's multiplication OR division depending on whichever one comes first, left to right.
1
I was taught (P)(E)(MD)(AS) Multiplication and Division were in the same group so that if you had just those two things left you just worked from left to right