Memes

Having read your article, I contend it should be:
P(arentheses)
E(xponents)
M(ultiplication)D(ivision)
A(ddition)S(ubtraction)
and strong juxtaposition should be thrown out the window.

Why? Well, to be clear, I would prefer one of them die so we can get past this argument that pops up every few years so weak or strong doesn't matter much to me, and I think weak juxtaposition is more easily taught and more easily supported by PEMDAS. I'm not saying it receives direct support, but rather the lack of instruction has us fall back on what we know as an overarching rule (multiplication and division are equal). Strong juxtaposition has an additional ruling to PEMDAS that specifies this specific case, whereas weak juxtaposition doesn't need an additional ruling (and I would argue anyone who says otherwise isn't logically extrapolating from the PEMDAS ruleset). I don't think the sides are as equal as people pose.

To note, yes, PEMDAS is a teaching tool and yes there are obviously other ways of thinking of math. But do those matter? The mathematical system we currently use will work for any usecase it does currently regardless of the juxtaposition we pick, brackets/parentheses (as well as better ordering of operations when writing them down) can pick up any slack. Weak juxtaposition provides better benefits because it has less rules (and is thusly simpler).

But again, I really don't care. Just let one die. Kill it, if you have to.

Meanwhile, I'm over in the corner like

My only complaint is the suggestion that engineers like to be clear. My undergrad classes included far too many things like 2 cos 2 x sin y

Forgot the algebra using fruit emoji or whatever the fuck.

Bonus points for the stuff where suddenly one of the symbols has changed and it's "supposedly" 1/2 or 2/3 etc. of a banana now, without that symbol having been defined.

You guys are doing it all wrong: ask chatgpt for the correct answer and paste it here. Done.

Who needs to learn or know anything really?

I don't remember everything, but I remember the first two operations are exponents then parentheses. Edit: wait is it the other way around?

Hi, I’m stupid, is it 1+2 first, then multiple it by 2, then divide 6 by 6?

Or is it 1+2, then divide 6 by 2, then multiple?

I think it’s the first one but I’ve got no idea.

You lost me on the section when you started going into different calculators, but I read the rest of the post. Well written even if I ultimately disagree!

The reason imo there is ambiguity with these math problems is bad/outdated teaching. The way I was taught pemdas, you always do the left-most operations first, while otherwise still following the ordering.

Doing this for 6÷2(1+2), there is no ambiguity that the answer is 9. You do your parentheses first as always, 6÷2(3), and then since division and multiplication are equal in ordering weight, you do the division first because it's the left most operation, leaving us 3(3), which is of course 9.

If someone wrote this equation with the intention that the answer is 1, they wrote the equation wrong, simple as that.

My years out of school has made me forget about how division notation is actually supposed to work and how genuinely useless the ÷ and / symbols are outside the most basic two-number problems. And it's entirely me being dumb because I've already written problems as 6÷(2(1+2)) to account for it before. Me brain dun work right ;~;

When I used to play WoW years ago I'd always put -6 x 6 - 6 = -12 in trade chat and they would all lose their minds. Adding that incorrect solution usually got them more riled up than having no solution.

While I agree the problem as written is ambiguous and should be written with explicit operators, I have 1 argument to make. In pretty much every other field if we have a question the answer pretty much always ends up being something along the lines of "well the experts do this" or "this professor at this prestigious university says this", or "the scientific community says". The fact that this article even states that academic circles and "scientific" calculators use strong juxtaposition, while basic education and basic calculators use weak juxtaposition is interesting. Why do we treat math differently than pretty much every other field? Shouldn't strong juxtaposition be the precedent and the norm then just how the scientific community sets precedents for literally every other field? We should start saying weak juxtaposition is wrong and just settle on one.

This has been my devil's advocate argument.

That blog post was awesome, thanks for doing that work and letting us know about it!

I just finished your article and wow! I'm definitely going to save it and share it the next time I come across another one of those viral problems. It was incredibly thorough and well researched, you clearly put a lot of energy and effort into it and it blew me away. It was really refreshing to see someone articulate themselves so passionately with supporting research. I look forward to reading more of your work!! 👏

I don't have much to say on this, other than that I appreciate how well-written this deep dive is and I appreciate you for writing it. People get so polarized with these viral math problems and it baffles me.

I guess if you wrote it out with a different annotation it would be

‎ ‎ 6

-‐--------‐--------------

2(1+2)

=

6

-‐--------‐--------------

2×3

=

6

--‐--------‐--------------

6

=1

I hate the stupid things though