• BlackVenom@lemmy.world
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    5 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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      5 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.