this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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6÷2(1+2) (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

https://zeta.one/viral-math/

I wrote a (very long) blog post about those viral math problems and am looking for feedback, especially from people who are not convinced that the problem is ambiguous.

It's about a 30min read so thank you in advance if you really take the time to read it, but I think it's worth it if you joined such discussions in the past, but I'm probably biased because I wrote it :)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

6⁄2(1+2) ⇒ 6⁄2*3 ⇒ 6⁄6 ⇒ 1

You're more patient than me to go to that trouble! 😂 But yeah, looks good. Just one technicality (and relates to how many people arrive at the wrong answer), the 2x3 should be in brackets. Yes if you had a proper fraction bar it wouldn't matter, but that's what's missing with inline writing, and is compensated for with brackets (and brackets can't be removed unless there's only 1 term inside). In your original comment, it does indeed look like 6/(2x3), but, to illustrate the issue with what you wrote, as soon as I quoted it, it now looks like (6/2)x3 in my comment.