Poll: 6÷2(1+2)
- Thread starter Barks
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Associate
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Why are people still responding to Hatter?
Clearly at this point he's shown that he's completely incapable of stepping out of the little box he's made for himself.
Every utterance of 'standard order of operations' is met with the same response of it being irrelevant to people actually versed in mathematics beyond the simple GCSE level, to which Hatter just goes blank face and starts the broken record again.
It's like someone learning the 'ABC Song' in preschool, never being educated in English at any level beyond that, and then arguing that the letters "Now I know my ABCs, why don't you come and play me" follow "X, Y, Z" to journalists, English teachers, et al...
Clearly at this point he's shown that he's completely incapable of stepping out of the little box he's made for himself.
Every utterance of 'standard order of operations' is met with the same response of it being irrelevant to people actually versed in mathematics beyond the simple GCSE level, to which Hatter just goes blank face and starts the broken record again.
It's like someone learning the 'ABC Song' in preschool, never being educated in English at any level beyond that, and then arguing that the letters "Now I know my ABCs, why don't you come and play me" follow "X, Y, Z" to journalists, English teachers, et al...
Thats the whole argument of this thread!!
Whether y=2(1+2) as you said
and get 6 ÷ y
or whether
y=2 with z=1+2 and the equation being
6÷y*z
The operator '/' or '÷' merely applies to the next term in the instance of the OP this is '2'
The question in the OP isn't 6÷y [where y = 2(1+2)]
This is a mistaken assumption on your part.
for it to be 6÷y it would have had to be written 6÷(2(1+2))
FWIW 6*(1/2)(1+2) = 9
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It can't be interpreted 2 ways, the person who originally wrote it may have had a different interpretation in mind, but there is only one way to interpret it as its written.
Is that the entire definition of a self contained term? Do you have a link?
Soldato
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Well you should - because if I didn't give a crap about the standard order of operations and were, say, programming a calculator for a flight or fuel console, we'd risk being in a lot of trouble
It is 9!!!
6/2(1+2) is confusing but isn't actually ambiguous - the divisor is just '2' - that is how the '/' symbol is used - there is one answer and that is 9
.
It IS ambiguous which is the whole point of the question. If it was written as 6(1+2)/2 it would be clear what it means.
Associate
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Well lots of people have interpreted it two ways, so that statement is factually incorrect.
We all know that according to bodmas or whatever, the answer comes out as 9, but to anyone with more than GCSE maths, those rules are irrelevent, we wouldn't have been presented a problem in that format in years, so we interpret it in a way we are used to.
6÷2(1+2) translates to 6 over 2x(1+2) which is:
6
_____
2x(1+2)
Which is 1. So the answer can be interpreted to be two different numbers, so there is no valid answer.
Soldato
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No, 3 is a simplified way of writing 1(3) or 3(1). 1*3 is a formula and as such is unresolved.
1 / 2(3)
in this example, 1 AND 2(3) are self contained quantities
1 / 2 * 3
In this example, 1 AND 2 AND 3 are self contained quantities
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Associate
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Well you should - because if I didn't give a crap about the standard order of operations and were, say, programming a calculator for a flight or fuel console, we'd risk being in a lot of trouble
Would you bung that poor formatting into a line of code, or would you clear it up so that it couldn't possibly be misinterpreted?
And we're not really talking about how a calculator could interpret it, that isn't relevent, but how a human would.
It's not a mistaken assumption, as that could very well be the case.
But it is an assumption, but that's why you can't solve this problem.
Either way you have to make an assumption, to which your always going to get people who think your assumption is wrong and theirs is right.
I made it up. If there was to be a logical definition, that's it.
You can't just call 2(1+2) y and then sub in y. Can't you see that is different?
So why did you mistakenly assume to use brackets for the 1/3?
QED
I've not - I'm applying the same rule to both
'/' or '÷' just applies to the next term
9÷3÷3 can be written as 9*(1/3)*(1/3) = 1
or in the instance of the OP
6÷2(1+2)
can be written as 6*(1/2)(1+2)
Without wanting to repeat myself too many times - this is simply a question of the defention of the operator '÷' or '/' - believe it or not they have been used before and this problem has been considered before.....
