Your obviously is only a convention and not everyone agree with that. Not even all peogramming languages or calculators.
If you wanted obviously, it would have to have different order or parentheses or both. Of course everything in math is convention but I mean more obvious.
2+2*4 is obvious with PEDMAS, but hardy obvious to common people
2+(2*4) is more obvious to common people
2*4+2 is even more obvious to people not good with math. I would say this is the preferred form.
(2*4)+2 doesn’t really add more to it, it just emphasises it more, but unnecessarily.
PEMDAS isn’t obvious to “common people”? Why not? It doesn’t seem like an arbitrary convention to me…
If “×” means “groups of,” then “2+2×4” means “two plus two groups of four” which only makes sense, to me, to be read as “two plus two groups of four” rather than “two plus two groups of four”
Sure the order of operations could be arbitrarily different, but I feel like we settled on that order because it simply makes more sense intuitively.
I’m aware of the possibility that it only feels natural and intuitive to me because I was taught that way, but I at least don’t think that applies to this specific example
It didn’t occur to me that the poll may function that way. Does it? I thought this was engagement bait in which the poll’s author lists only wrong answers as options
Honestly that’s my pet peeve about this category of content. Over the years I’ve seen (at least) hundreds of these check-out-how-bad-at-math-everyone-is posts and it’s nearly always order of operations related. Apparently, a bunch of people forgot (or just never learned) PEMDAS.
Now, having an agreed-upon convention absolutely matters for arriving at expected computational outcomes, but we call it a convention for a reason: it’s not a “correct” vs “incorrect” principle of mathematics. It’s just a rule we agreed upon to allow consistent results.
So any good math educator will be clear on this. If you know the PEMDAS convention already, that’s good, since it’s by far the most common today. But if you don’t yet, don’t worry. It doesn’t mean you’re too dumb to math. With a bit of practice, you won’t even have to remember the acronym.
Most actual math people never have to think about pemdas here because no one would ever write a problem like this. The trick here is “when was the last time I saw an X to mean multiplication” so I would already be off about it
1 + 1/2 in my brain is clearly 1.5, but 1+1÷2 doesn’t even register in my brain properly.
Right, and that clue IMO unravels the more troubling aspect of why this content spreads so quickly:
It’s deliberately aimed at people with a rudimentary math education who can be made to feel far superior to others who, in spite of having roughly the same level of proficiency, are missing/forgetting a single fact that has a disproportionate effect on the result they expect.
That is, it’s blue-dress-level contentious engagement bait for anyone with low math skills, whether or not they remember PEMDAS.
I feel like people should at least remember math at a 4th grade level and be able to get 10. What is the point of making it obvious the universe will never ever arrange itself in such a fashion. The point is if you remember simple rules you applied for a 10-15 years.
You’ve completely not understood that order of operations is an arbitrary convention. How did you decide to expand the definition of multiplication before evaluating the addition? Convention.
You can’t write 2 + 2 ÷ 2 like this, so how are you gonna decide whether to decide to divide or add first?
Your obviously is only a convention and not everyone agree with that. Not even all peogramming languages or calculators.
If you wanted obviously, it would have to have different order or parentheses or both. Of course everything in math is convention but I mean more obvious.
2+2*4 is obvious with PEDMAS, but hardy obvious to common people
2+(2*4) is more obvious to common people
2*4+2 is even more obvious to people not good with math. I would say this is the preferred form.
(2*4)+2 doesn’t really add more to it, it just emphasises it more, but unnecessarily.
common people who are not good at math…
PEMDAS is in the 5th-grade curriculum.
My obviously is gated to people who can hadle 5th-grade math.
I would say we should not provide the mathematically illiterate any say in the matter. They need to spend 10 minutes on Youtube and learn it.
PEMDAS isn’t obvious to “common people”? Why not? It doesn’t seem like an arbitrary convention to me…
If “×” means “groups of,” then “2+2×4” means “two plus two groups of four” which only makes sense, to me, to be read as “two plus two groups of four” rather than “two plus two groups of four”
Sure the order of operations could be arbitrarily different, but I feel like we settled on that order because it simply makes more sense intuitively.
I’m aware of the possibility that it only feels natural and intuitive to me because I was taught that way, but I at least don’t think that applies to this specific example
Clearly not if most of these answers are incorrect. If it was obvious, there wouldn’t be as many answers as there are.
It didn’t occur to me that the poll may function that way. Does it? I thought this was engagement bait in which the poll’s author lists only wrong answers as options
Honestly that’s my pet peeve about this category of content. Over the years I’ve seen (at least) hundreds of these check-out-how-bad-at-math-everyone-is posts and it’s nearly always order of operations related. Apparently, a bunch of people forgot (or just never learned) PEMDAS.
Now, having an agreed-upon convention absolutely matters for arriving at expected computational outcomes, but we call it a convention for a reason: it’s not a “correct” vs “incorrect” principle of mathematics. It’s just a rule we agreed upon to allow consistent results.
So any good math educator will be clear on this. If you know the PEMDAS convention already, that’s good, since it’s by far the most common today. But if you don’t yet, don’t worry. It doesn’t mean you’re too dumb to math. With a bit of practice, you won’t even have to remember the acronym.
I learned BEDMAS. Doesn’t really change your comment other than effectively “spelling” of a single term
Most actual math people never have to think about pemdas here because no one would ever write a problem like this. The trick here is “when was the last time I saw an X to mean multiplication” so I would already be off about it
1 + 1/2 in my brain is clearly 1.5, but 1+1÷2 doesn’t even register in my brain properly.
Right, and that clue IMO unravels the more troubling aspect of why this content spreads so quickly:
It’s deliberately aimed at people with a rudimentary math education who can be made to feel far superior to others who, in spite of having roughly the same level of proficiency, are missing/forgetting a single fact that has a disproportionate effect on the result they expect.
That is, it’s blue-dress-level contentious engagement bait for anyone with low math skills, whether or not they remember PEMDAS.
Blue-dress-level?
Old internet thing. Hotly debated at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress
I’ll add the contextual link above for others, since it’s been awhile.
Try RPN for a whole different beast
I am familiar with RPN. At least RPN is always unambiguous
I feel like people should at least remember math at a 4th grade level and be able to get 10. What is the point of making it obvious the universe will never ever arrange itself in such a fashion. The point is if you remember simple rules you applied for a 10-15 years.
There’s just 5 lots of 2. If it’s hard then think of x being just a bunch of + smooshed together. So
2 + 2 x 4
expands to
2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2
or contracts to
5 x 2
You’ve completely not understood that order of operations is an arbitrary convention. How did you decide to expand the definition of multiplication before evaluating the addition? Convention.
You can’t write 2 + 2 ÷ 2 like this, so how are you gonna decide whether to decide to divide or add first?