Spend enough time on social media and chances are you will see what I started calling a bad mathematic scam. This is where an account, who wants to make their involvement juice, posting equations with challenges for people to solve it. Often, it will say something like “only ’80s children who can do this” or “challenge brain power: Can you do this without a calculator?”. The only problem is that the equation is very ambiguous – written that you can produce many answers.
This is the one I found floating on the internet a few days ago from an account that seemed to share a lot of content that existed with viral expectations. Reading Tweet (in the True Virus Bait Style) “Please do not use a calculator, use your brain: 50 + 50 – 25 x 0 + 2 + 2 = ??”.
Now, the equation is quite ambiguous in its design, depending on how you handle it, it produces a number of different answers. In this case, the user concludes that the answer is definitely 0, 4, 79 or 104. The next chat often breaks into several discussions about how the operating command works and how stupid others are. Between arguments, counter-arguments, and people who are satisfied to retweet about how other people don’t pay attention to middle school mathematics, original posters have managed to get their engagement.
But there is a solution, and a neat way to arrive at the right answer is good for this problem and for others you see online. And I have registered the help of mathematics experts to help explain it so that this kind of viral bait never tripped you again. Especially if you don’t remember your local government (or Bodmas, if you grew up on the other side of the pool) from high school mathematics.
Gather Helen Crowley is a mathematics lecturer at the University of Anglia, and takes problems with how I describe the equation. “The problem owned [above] is not really ambiguous at all,” he said, “Mathematics is a subject who behaves very well and there is a fixed rule that all problems like this.” Gather Crowley, of course, refers to the order of operations, which explains how multi-part equations as above are intended to be broken down and worked.
In the US and Britain, the order of operations was stated under the Regional Government (US) or Bodmas (UK) acronym. Provisions may be different, but the order in which you calculate each part of the component of the equation remains the same. You start with anything in parentheses / brackets, and then switch to anything using exponents / orders, namely numbers including square roots and strength. The above equation, don’t use it.
Third in the list is multiplication and division, which is the first function that we really need to do. “For this problem, we [first] do 25 x 0 = 0,” Dr. Crowley. 0 then put himself into the amount, which now looks like 50 + 50 – 0 + 2 + 2. “The last two operations that need to be considered are the addition and reduction,” Dr. Crowley, made the final number of 50 + 50 – 0 + 2 + 2 = 104. “This is exactly what your calculator said, because it is programmed to ‘know’ order,” said Dr. Crowley, “The problem above is certainly not ambiguous, we only forget the rules.”
Now, you might be wondering who is in charge of building this order, and when it might happen. R. The UAE Mark Cooker, the order of operations at this time may be first set in their current form in the mid-16th century. Before that time, “the script is fully routed, and is free of operational symbols, except abbreviations,” said Dr. Cooker. But from the mid-16th century and so on, mathematics text was first printed in large quantities for education. “
