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 :)

  • Einar@lemm.ee
    ·
    1 year ago

    I read the whole article. I don't agree with the notation of the American Physical Society, but who am I to argue that? 😄

    I started out thinking I knew how the order of operations worked and ended up with a broader view of the subject. Thank you for opening my mind a bit today. I will be more explicit in my notations from now on.

    • wischi@programming.dev
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Thank you so much for taking the time. I'm also not convinced that APS's notation is a very good choice but I'm neither american nor a physisist 🤣

      I'd love to see how the exceptions work that the APS added, like allowing explicit multiplications on line-breaks, if they still would do the multiplication first, but I couldn't find a single instance where somebody following the APS notation had line-break inside an expression.