Post #4366670

2026-07-30 23:54 UTC

@dpnash@c.im "clearly the correct answer, period" - except some aren't following it correctly, and end up with a wrong answer. "which nicely sidesteps most of the notational ambiguities" - there aren't any ambiguities

Replies (1)

@dpnash@c.im 2026-07-31 00:47

@SmartmanApps@dotnet.social This particular one’s unambiguous, but there’s at least one of these meme problems that has something annoying like “6➗2x” in it. This is only unambiguous if you insist that this must be read as an *ordered sequence* of operations: “six divided by two, then multiplied by x” And that it must never be interpreted as a *grouped set* of operations, like the very similar-looking 6 — 2x which is unambiguously “six divided by the result of multiplying x by two” (i.e. not the same as the ordered sequence), and also how most of us write division after about 8th grade. This is also why, past a certain point, *nobody writes expressions like these the first way*, outside of silly meme problems. In particular, you almost never want “2x” to accidentally become 2/x or x/2, but that’s what happens in 4th grade order-of-operations meme problems if you’re not careful.

Open ##4366669