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

The answer realistically is determined by where you place implicit multiplication (or "multiplication by juxtaposition") in the order of operations.

Some place it above explicit multiplication and division, meaning it gets done before the division giving you an answer of 1

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

Since those are both valid interpretations of the order of operations dependent on what field you're in, you're always going to end up with disagreements on questions like these...

But in reality nobody would write an equation like this, and even if they did, there would usually be some kind of context (I.e. units) to guide you as to what the answer should be.

Edit: Just skimmed that article, and it looks like I did remember the last explanation I heard about these correctly. Yay me!

Ackshually, the answer is 4

6÷2*(1+2)

6÷(1+2)*2

6÷(3)*2

2*2

4

You're welcome

Typo in article:

If you are however willing to except the possibility that you are wrong.

Except should be 'accept'.

Not trying to be annoying, but I know people will often find that as a reason to disregard academic arguments.

Great write up! The answer is use parentheses or fractions and stop wasting everyone’s time 😅

I tried explaining this to people on facebook in 2010 or so.

"You must be fun at parties!"

Bitch, i dont want to attend your lame ass party where people think they know how math works.

What if the real answer is the friends we made along the way?

I love that the calculators showing different answers are both from the same manufacturer XD

My TI-84 Plus is my holy oracle, I will go with whatever it says.

And then get distracted and play some Doom.

What's especially wild to me is that even the position of "it's ambiguous" gets almost as much pushback as trying to argue that one of them is universally correct.

Last time this came up it was my position that it was ambiguous and needed clarification and had someone accuse me of taking a prescriptive stance and imposing rules contrary to how things were actually being done. How asking a person what they mean or seeking clarification could possibly be prescriptive is beyond me.

Bonus points, the guy telling me I was being prescriptive was arguing vehemently that implicit multiplication having precedence was correct and to do otherwise was wrong, full stop.

The real lesson here is that clear, unambiguous communication is key.

Just write it better.

6/(2(1+2))

Or

(6/2)(1+2)

That's how it works in the real world when you're using real numbers to calculate actual things anyways.

It's hilarious seeing all the genius commenters who didn't read the linked article and are repeating all the exact answers and arguments that the article rebuts :)

Meanwhile programmers will be like, fools, clearly 2(n) is a function 😏

I always hate any viral math post for the simple reason that it gives me PTSD flashbacks to my Real Analysis classes.

The blog post is fine, but could definitely be condensed quite a bit across the board and still effectively make the same points would be my only critique.

At it core Mathematics is the language and practices used in order to communicate numbers to one another and it's always nice to have someone reasonably argue that any ambiguity of communication means that you're not communicating effectively.

The only correct answer is 8008135.

I disagree. Without explicit direction on OOO we have to follow the operators in order.

The parentheses go first. 1+2=3

Then we have 6 ÷2 ×3

Without parentheses around (2×3) we can't do that first. So OOO would be left to right. 9.

In other words, as an engineer with half a PhD, I don't buy strong juxtaposition. That sounds more like laziness than math.

Seems this whole thing is the pedestrian-math-nerd’s equivalent to the pedestrian-grammar-nerd’s arguments on the Oxford comma. At the end of the day it seems mathematical notation is just as flexible as any other facet of written human communication and the real answer is “make things as clear as possible and if there is ambiguity, further clarify what you are trying to communicate.”

Build two cases, calculate for both, drag both case through the entirety of both problems, get two answers, make a case for both answers, end up with two hypothesis. Easy!

I would also add that you shouldn't be using a basic calculator to solve multi part problems. Second, I haven't seen a division sign used in a formal math class since elementary and possibly junior high. These things are almost always written as fractions which makes the logic easier to follow. The entire point of working in convention is so that results are reproducible. The real problem though is that these are not written to educate anyone. They are deliberately written to confuse so that some social media personality can make money from clicks. If someone really wants to practice math skip the click and head over to the Kahn Academy or something similar.

Interesting, I didn't know about strong implicit multiplication. So I would have said the result is 9. All along my studies in France, up to my physics courses at University, all my teachers used weak implicit multiplication. Could be it's the norm in France, or they only use it in math studies at University.

1 2 + 2 * 6 /

What's the problem?

Also, you forgot my inlaws, one of whom believes the answer is 5.

I really hate the social media discussion about this. And the comments in the past teached me, there are two different ways of learning math in the world.

Having read your article, I contend it should be:
P(arentheses)
E(xponents)
M(ultiplication)D(ivision)
A(ddition)S(ubtraction)
and strong juxtaposition should be thrown out the window.

Why? Well, to be clear, I would prefer one of them die so we can get past this argument that pops up every few years so weak or strong doesn't matter much to me, and I think weak juxtaposition is more easily taught and more easily supported by PEMDAS. I'm not saying it receives direct support, but rather the lack of instruction has us fall back on what we know as an overarching rule (multiplication and division are equal). Strong juxtaposition has an additional ruling to PEMDAS that specifies this specific case, whereas weak juxtaposition doesn't need an additional ruling (and I would argue anyone who says otherwise isn't logically extrapolating from the PEMDAS ruleset). I don't think the sides are as equal as people pose.

To note, yes, PEMDAS is a teaching tool and yes there are obviously other ways of thinking of math. But do those matter? The mathematical system we currently use will work for any usecase it does currently regardless of the juxtaposition we pick, brackets/parentheses (as well as better ordering of operations when writing them down) can pick up any slack. Weak juxtaposition provides better benefits because it has less rules (and is thusly simpler).

But again, I really don't care. Just let one die. Kill it, if you have to.

I think this speaks to why I have a total of 5 years of college and no degree.

Starting at about 7th grade, math class is taught to every single American school child as if they're going to grow up to become mathematicians. Formal definitions, proofs, long sets of rules for how you manipulate squiggles to become other squiggles that you're supposed to obey because that's what the book says.

Early my 7th grade year, my teacher wrote a long string of numbers and operators on the board, something like 6 + 4 - 7 * 8 + 3 / 9. Then told us to work this problem and then say what we came up with. This divided us into two groups: Those who hadn't learned Order of Operations on our own time who did (six plus four is ten, minus seven is three, times eight is 24, plus three is 27, divided by nine is three) Three, and who were then told we were wrong and stupid, and those who somehow had, who did (seven times eight is 56, three divided by nine is some tiny fraction...) got a very different number, and were told they were right. Terrible method of teaching, because it alienates the students who need to do the learning right off the bat. And this basically set the tone until I dropped out of college for the second time.