LOL, this has been a fun thread to watch and participate in.
So, let me throw another loop in, or rather, an observation:
In my office I have two admins, both 20. One is uber smart in mathematics and one is average, like me. The uber smart guy said straight up linear equation it equals 288, but the use of the (divide by symbol not the slash) made it appear as a fraction (nominator divided by denominator), he said the equation was "crap" because it wasn't defined clearly.
Now my other admin, she took one look at it and said 2. That they were still teaching in school that multiplication functions come before the division functions, so she had no idea that they were considered "equal weight" and to process from left to right. (This is in Houston, TX btw)
We all agreed that the use of one extra parenthesis would have made a HUGE difference.
So I did a google search at lunch because I wanted to see what else was being said about the equation... the hits were many and varied. So much fun to read through them. That being said, I can't argue the logic of the 288ers, but based on the way the equation was written in the title of the thread, and they way I was taught many years ago, my answer is still 2. Nominator divided by denominator, with a desperate need for one extra set of parenthesis.
:-)
A smilie? Really? I'm stuned!
Can't you tell this is a hughly series thread? Has there been anything even remotely approaching humor in a jugular vein or lightheartedness in this ponderous discussion of massive import with the greatest minds of the (known) universe participating.
"Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." -- Sayer's Law
they were still teaching in school that multiplication functions come before the division functions, so she had no idea that they were considered "equal weight" and to process from left to right.
This is what happens when teachers' colleges teach pedagogy and don't teach the fundamentals.
That being said, I can't argue the logic of the 288ers, but based on the way the equation was written in the title of the thread, and they way I was taught many years ago, my answer is still 2. Nominator divided by denominator, with a desperate need for one extra set of parenthesis.
Unfortunately, with the way single-line expressions are parsed, you do indeed need those parentheses if you want the answer to be 2.
It's not something I made up, it's how every programming language I've ever seen has parsed operators.
An extra set of parentheses is required only for those who don’t know about the distributive property and those who program computers.
Those who know of the existence of the distributive property can easily determine the only correct answer is 2.
And BTW, I was taught that multiplications should be done prior to division, but that was a long time ago.
Agree completely, and further to the point, a word processor created text paragraph makes matters so much worse. Written with a pencil on a blank piece of paper, the equation would have been more clear with or without the extra parens.