This morning I had the totally random and completely unsolicited realization that “Ghengis Khan” has the same number of syllables as “Stacey’s Mom”, and if I have to be cursed with this knowledge then so do you.
Oh my god
Ghengis Khan has got it going on
He’s all I want and I’ve waited for so long
Gongsun*, can’t you see you’re just not the one for me
I know it might be wrong but I’m in love with Ghengis Khan
*Chinese warlord from Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Last week I joked that my very cerebral, retired-police-chief-grandpa is basically Holt from Brooklyn 99 and then today someone said, “damn, we’re out of decaf” and he just deadpans “well there’s no need to get hysterical.”
Yesterday he said “if you need to insult the same person twice you’ve already failed in your goal to devastate them”
My Yaya was trying to remember the name of a guy who stole money from her in high school today and my grandpa instantly pipes up “his name was Bernie Ryan and he was a scoundrel”
is your Yaya like Kevin, please say yes
I will answer this one because yes, my grandmother is also a judgey redhead who loves academia and finds action movies “disgusting” and it’s hilarious
Y'all please, learn your pemdas (or bodmas or whatever you learned it as)
It’s 16
*sigh*
Parentheses equation is 2+2, which is 4.
Now we multiply by 2 to get 4x2 which is 8
8 DIVIDED BY 8 is 1.
I have no fucking clue how you can get 16 out of this. I don’t think you’re bad at math, I think you just need glasses.
It’s 1.
It’s 16.
8 / 2 * (2+2) =
8/2 * (4) =
4*4 = 16
You do the parentheses, then you go left to right.
That isn’t how this works…..
PEMDAS
8/2*(2+2) (P = Parentheses)
8/2*(4) (M = Multiply)
8/8=1 (D = Division)
@kingoftartesoss
Use Mathpapa calculator if you still don’t believe me.
No, Riley.
M isn’t in the original problem but 8÷2 still needs a resolution. You have to solve 8÷2 as-is after (2+2) no matter what.
So you’re not following PEMDAS by factoring x4 into 8÷2.
It’s literally this simple.
I, uh, I think it’s 1, actually.
Plug it into a searchbar, or a scientific calculator that waits until the whole thing is input & that’s the answer.
1
No need.
Everyone on this post:
@nonanalogue can you solve this for us because I swear to goodness the answer is 1 but this post is making me doubt my brains
Happily!
So the problem is two-fold: first, order of operations as most people are taught it is a lie, and second, the original problem is written very ambiguously.
Let’s drill down into that first point.
PEMDAS! Parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction. Everyone’s taught to do operations in that order! Except that’s not really right. As a math teacher of mine put it, “it works for now, but you’ll find out I was lying in a few years.”
The problem is that multiplication and division are the same operation, and addition and subtraction are also the same operation. Division is really just multiplying by a fraction, and subtraction is just adding a negative. With that in mind, it doesn’t necessarily make sense to do some multiplication arbitrarily early in the problem before the rest! As a result, here’s the bottom line for that point:
Both 1 and 16 are right.
How can that be?
Well, that brings me to the second point: the expression is written very ambiguously, so as to maximize confusion! It’s also why I don’t like using the division symbol when a fraction will do just nicely.
Observe two other ways we could write this expression:
The first one resolves to 8/8, which is 1. The second resolves to 4(4), which is 16. Both are right, only because the original expression is vague.
The sad thing is that everyone hates fractions, when actually they make life so much nicer!
