Post #4366671

@SmartmanApps@dotnet.social Like a lot of people, remembered PEMDAS (or the regional equivalent) to get the answer from 4th grade math class, which (because M and D are actually equal in priority) is clearly the correct answer, period. Then remembered that just about the only times I’ve seen division written like this since …well, roughly 4th grade math class, is in internet meme problems like this, because nearly every division I’ve seen in mathematics since then looks like: 3x + y ——— 2 π which nicely sidesteps most of the notational ambiguities that these internet meme problems exploit. Once I hit middle-school algebra class, I stopped writing all but the simplest multiplication-containing, and *especially* division-containing, expressions like the meme problems *precisely because it is awkward and error-prone to do it that way*, and I am utterly unsurprised a lot of people “get those wrong” even when they understand elementary arithmetic perfectly well.