857
6÷2(1+2) (programming.dev)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by wischi@programming.dev to c/memes@lemmy.ml

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 :)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] MrMobius@sh.itjust.works 12 points 10 months ago

Interesting, I didn't know about strong implicit multiplication. So I would have said the result is 9. All along my studies in France, up to my physics courses at University, all my teachers used weak implicit multiplication. Could be it's the norm in France, or they only use it in math studies at University.

[-] wischi@programming.dev 13 points 10 months ago

In a scientific context it's actually very rare to run into that issue because divisions are mostly written as fractions which will completely mitigate the issue.

The strong implicit multiplication will only cause ambiguity after a division with inline notation. Once you use fractions the ambiguity vanishes.

In practice you also rarely see implicit multiplications between numbers but mostly between variables or variables and their coefficients.

[-] MrMobius@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

Yes of course, we always used fractions so there was no ambiguity. Last time I saw the division symbol must have been in primary school!

[-] SmartmanApps@programming.dev 1 points 7 months ago

You would've done dividing by fractions in high school, which requires both. Fractions and division aren't the same thing.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
857 points (96.4% liked)

Memes

45408 readers
533 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be civil and nice.
  2. Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS