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 :)

  • Pulptastic@midwest.social
    ·
    7 months ago

    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.

      • Pulptastic@midwest.social
        ·
        7 months ago

        I did read the article. I am commenting that I have never encountered strong juxtaposition and sharing why I think it is a poor choice.

        • flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
          ·
          7 months ago

          You probably missed the part where the article talks about university level math, and that strong juxtaposition is common there.

          I also think that many conventions are bad, but once they exist, their badness doesn't make them stop being used and relied on by a lot of people.

          I don't have any skin in the game as I never ran into ambiguity. My university professors simply always used fractions, therefore completely getting rid of any possible ambiguity.