I guess remembering grade school order of operation means you're a guinus now? Bar has gotten pretty low...

For the programmers: operator precedence.

Not a genius. But if subtraction is last, why isn't it 9-4?

The "why" goes a little further than that.

In actuality, it's because of fundamental properties of operations

• Commutation

a + b = b + a

a×b = b×a

• Association

(a + b) + c = a + (b + c)

(a×b)×c = a×(b×c)

• Identity

a + 0 = a

a×1 = a

If you know that, then PEMDAS and such are useless because they're derived from those properties but do not fully encompass them.

Eg.

3×2×(2+2) = 3×(4+4) = 12+12 = 24

This is a correct solution that is improper if you're strictly adhering to PEMDAS rule as I've done multiplication before parenthesis from right to left.

I could even go completely out of order by doing 3×2×(2+2) = 2×(6+6) and it will still be correct

on that note, can we please have parentheses in language. i keep making ambiguous sentences

Please don't include X with the boomers. Since we stepped into the real world and realized it functions completely differently than what we were raised to believe, life's just been a neverending string of "wait, that was wrong too?" We just want to survive another day under the radar.

Sorry fellow X'rs for publicly acknowledging our existence. Hopefully this post doesn't get any upvotes. *Pulls blanket back over my head.

Gen xers? Don't irk them. They're not noticing you right now.

Very independent, and cranky generation.

I was bad at math, but I still managed to get through precal and still remember PEMDAS

Anyone on Facebook that attempts to answer this or engage within its comments has already failed the test.

The issue normally with these "trick" questions is the ambiguous nature of that division sign (not so much a problem here) or people not knowing to just go left to right when all operators are of the same priority. A common mistake is to think division is prioritised above multiplication, when it actually has the same priority. Someone should have included some parenthesis in PEDMAS aka. PE(DM)(AS) 😄

Engagement bait

Entertainment.

The only thing that will remain on yt anyway after AI has taken over the content generation and we can trust no "creator" anymore.

Not strictly a scam, but there's a little money to be made creating viral content on Facebook. They receive a tiny portion of the ad revenue from Facebook when they generate engagement.

It's just Facebook sucking really.

11

OK, it's been a few hours. I'll do the clumsy thing that everyone else has avoided and point out that it's deliberately set up so that people who have never heard of operator precedence - those who do things purely left-to-right - don't get a weird fraction when the division step is done, making them think that the answer they've reached must be the right one. You'd still get a handful who'd argue regardless, but that whole number ropes in a whole bunch more.

Couple that with the fact that the value reached this way doesn't match the value obtained from using operator precedence and you get arguments about what the right answer is. And a comment like the one you're reading right now that's too long for the hard-of-thinking to read.

"More engagement, baybee [sunglasses smiley emoji] [cash bag emoji]" etc.