Comment on A fake Facebook event disguised as a math problem has been one of its top posts for 6 months
barsoap@lemm.ee 4 days agoIt’s ambiguous which one of these is correct. Hence the best method we have for “correct” is left to right.
The solution accepted anywhere but in the US school system is “Bloody use parenthesis, then”, as well as “Why is there more than one division in this formula why didn’t you re-arrange everything to be less confusing” up to “50 Hertz, in base units, are 50s^-1^”.
HereIAm@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I fully agree that if it comes down to “left to right” the problem really needs to be rewritten to be more clear. But I’ve just shown why that “rule” is a common part of these meme problems because it is so weird and quite esoteric.