"Your math problem is too ambiguous and needs to be re-written for clarification."
Ambiguous? There's only one possible meaning that's consistent with the rules of arithmetic. That's to obtain 288 as you did. The only way to produce the answer "2" is to insert an additional set of parenthesis that changes the factor that the division operator operates on from "2" to "2*12". There is no /(2(12)), it is only imagined in error.
In the original equation there are 3 factors, which are 48, 1/2 and 12. There is no factor of "2" in the equation. the equation is 48*1/2*12. Division is an inverse operation. There's a factor of 1/2, because the division operator means, "multiply by the multiplicative inverse of the following number". Arithmetic operators do not act beyond the single number, or value which follows them. They never span another operator and the number that operator acts on, so to imagine parenthesis that cause such an extension is an error, not an example of ambiguity.
When I first posted (somewhere in the 300s)I said the correct answer was 2. Then I did what you did and rewrote the equation as 48*1/2*12 and determined my first answer was incorrect and the answer is 288.
Using this logic, it'd be 48*1/2*1/12. Or 2. You would add the original 9+3, but is still in the denominator making it's absolute value 1/12.
“...so to imagine parenthesis that cause such an extension is an error, not an example of ambiguity.”
I was being polite when I used the term “ambiguous.” Would you have preferred if I called the equation “shite!”-—like I originally thought when I first saw it?
:)
Cheers