What's the answer to this very basic maths problem?

I was taught none of them yay - or maybe I wasn't paying attention but a quick flick through my old school books doesn't show anything covering it. For some reason my maths education was about 75% trigonometry.

I'd hope you'd learn the order of operations before getting onto trig :p
 
I'm gonna guess this is one of those questions where there are multiple "correct" answers due to the method changing over the past decades, resulting in some scientific calculators giving different results?

General response is to accept the "newer" result, even if it enrages the older generations :p

nope, basic arithmetic hasn't changed
 
Out of interest BODMAS (whatever name) has always existed in the same order?
I don't remember being taught this at school but I was a bit thick, still am.

You can call it something else. Multiplication/division are interchangeable (they are actually the same operation) and the same is true of addition/subtraction.

There aren't many phenetically ok sounding combinations though.
 
I'm gonna guess this is one of those questions where there are multiple "correct" answers

NO! :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

The answer is -11. There is a very specific order in which to resolve the operators in mathematics. That is

BIMDAS or Brackets, Indicies, Multiplication, Division, Addition and Subtraction in THAT order. At least that's the school version as Addition and Subtraction and Multiplication and Division are really the same thing. Indices are powers, e.g. squared, cubed. Brackets are parentheses.

Doing it in order produces:

= 7 + 16 / (-1 -7) - 16
= 7 + 16/-8 - 16
= 16/-8 - 9
= 2/-1 -9
= -2 -9
= -11

It is Mathematics. It does not age. There are no "multiple answers". (Except where you find the square root of positive numbers, anyway :rolleyes:).

I am angry now.
 
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This always used to confuse me as a kid. We had one teacher who taught us BEDMAS and then we had a different once teaching us BODMAS which are the same thing, the E just stands for exponents. Dumbass teachers.

I was taught BIMDAS. The other that I was taught was "The Old Arab Sat On His Camel And Howled".
 
You can call it something else. Multiplication/division are interchangeable (they are actually the same operation) and the same is true of addition/subtraction.

yup in fact the acronyms could potentially be confusing if someone forgets that the 'A' and 'S' are at the same level

after all the operators + and - are of the same precedence and left associative, but if you were to blindly follow BODMAS or some similar acronym and put say addition at a higher level of precedence than subtraction then you could go wrong:

for example 1 - 2 + 3 = 2

but if you assume that addition takes precedent because A is in front of S in 'BODMAS' then you might confuse things, essentially end up calculating 1 - (2 + 3) = -4
 
NO! :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:
Doing it in order produces:

= 7 + 16 / (-1 -7) - 16
= 7 + 16/-8 - 16
= 16/-2 - 9
= 2/-1 -9
= -2 -9
= -11
I am angry now.


Ermm? That a very odd way to step things in this puzzle
= 7 + 16 / (-1 -7) - 16 OK
= 7 + 16/-8 - 16 OK
= 16/-2 - 9 WTF? surely = 7-2-16 which = -11
= 2/-1 -9
= -2 -9
= -11
 
I'd hope you'd learn the order of operations before getting onto trig :p

My education was shockingly bad looking back on it - absolutely no organisation of what was taught year to year. I started junior school around the time they brought the
national curriculum in and I know my junior school was a test bed for some stuff just before it was rolled out which is probably why.
 
Ermm? That a very odd way to step things in this puzzle
= 7 + 16 / (-1 -7) - 16 OK
= 7 + 16/-8 - 16 OK
= 16/-2 - 9 WTF? surely = 7-2-16 which = -11
= 2/-1 -9
= -2 -9
= -11

EDIT: Apologies, I did it in my head and then just wrote it out without checking. I'm very sorry. I've corrected the original post now. I meant to type 16/-8 and then change that to -2 on the next line and ended up typing a mish-mash of the two.
 
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Third step I re-ordered the sum for readability. It was 7 + (16/-2) - 16 which is the same as (16/-2) + 7 - 16 which is the same as (16/-2) - 9. I saw no reason to have both a +7 and a -16 when it can just be made into a single constant. Obviously it's easier to read with parentheses but I was keeping to the ugliness of the original question.

you seem to have made a typo on that line which has added to the confusion and which you've carried on there in that post, it should be: 7 + (16/-8) - 16 not 7 + (16/-2) - 16
 
There was some base mirth that your anger lead to a typo :) hehe

Anger and mathematics are poor bedfellows. I accept the Hat of Shame.

carol.jpg
 
Got me at first lol.
The symbols are different, sneaky.

As are the times on the clocks and the number of bananas.

The geometrics in the first line are identical so they must equal fifteen (45/3). The number of sides in each of them adds up to 15.

The geometric in the second line matches those in the first and the number of bananas is identical for both of them so they must equal four each. Which matches the number of bananas in the bunch.

The bunch on the third line is again four meaning the clocks must count as three each. And that is the hour shown on both clocks.

So the last line is 2 o' clock + 2x three bananas + 11 sides. Which is 2 + 6 + 11.

Which is nineteen. Or, with my track record, probably -2. But one of those.
 
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