• MajorMajormajormajor@lemmy.ca
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    6 days ago

    Yeah, nah, this equation is whack. Any mathemagician worth their salt doesn’t write an equation like this. This isn’t difficult math, it’s ambiguous and dumb.

    Write it like:

    8/[2(2+2)] or (8/2)(2+2)

    problem solved.

    • Ech@lemmy.ca
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      6 days ago

      This isn’t difficult math, it’s ambiguous and dumb.

      All of these ragebait math posts are. It’s so shitty and obvious, but it always seems to work.

    • audaxdreik@pawb.social
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      6 days ago

      This is exactly why I’m an abuser of parentheses when left to my own devices.

      For example when writing code, it doesn’t matter that the compiler acts as a strict system underlying it that may or may not conform to my expectations. I want the human reading the code to understand my intentions so I’m going to group things until it’s logically clear at a glance.

    • BlackVenom@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Because there are no parentheses around the first and last two, it should be assumed to be the latter, yeah?

      I arrived at 1 prior to trying to understand how it could be 16…

      As written, 8÷2… Is the same as 8/2… It would require those brackets/parentheses otherwise.

      • brsrklf@jlai.lu
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        6 days ago

        This is ambiguous because in other, simpler contexts, implicit multiplication is implied to take priority over non-implicit division. And that’s just usual convention, not a set rule.

        If I write 1/2n, most likely it will be understood as 1/(2×n). While 1/2×n or 1÷2×n would be anyone’s guess. Again, 1/2n is not even a rule, just “convenient” and it “seems” like 2n is a block, but make that expression more complex with more operands and it’ll get confusing fast.

        There is no correct interpretation of a random ambiguous expression, it’s pointless trying to find one.