Yes, she votes, as do millions just like her
(media.scored.co)
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How are you getting to 9?Never mind, I'm an idiot.
Once I figured it out, it seemed obvious - but then again, 1 seemed obvious every time before that.
So I thought it was 1 because I eliminated the parentheses and did the multiplication.
Of course, that's pretty dumb, because once you eliminate the parentheses, you have to consider that '/' and '*' have equal precedence, so they have to be executed in the order that they're written.
So you end up with:
6 / 2 * 3
Which then becomes:
3 * 3 = 9
Is this wrong? That's be awesome. You wouldn't expect such a dumbass as the tweeter to post anything interesting...
It is still somewhat ambiguous, I believe. Many people were taught the way that gives you 1, not 9. Which leads me to agree with the argument that the issue is the equation itself, not which answer you get. It's just a troll statement that doesn't use sensible notation, and is thus useless for everything outside of trolling people. At least it does that exceptionally well, though.
I'm responding to my own comment, since whoever responded to me saying it wasn't ambiguous deleted the comment as I replied.
I've been breaking it down in various ways myself, as well as watching different people explain and talk about it. There's plenty of ambiguity. Mathematicians don't agree.
There are methods that imply 6/(2(1+2)) as how to read that, and that comes up with 1.
Another way of explaining it is the slash often ends up with...
6
───────
2 (2+1)
Which is 6/6, which is 1.
The statement is intentionally confusing, meant to be solved different ways by different people.
I think the best way I've heard it described is that this is a grammar problem, not a math problem.
How could it lead to a 1 though? I thought it was 1 initially, but that was because I made a mistake in the precedence.
EDIT: I see your other comment. But who was 'taught' the first form? And what is that even? Is it that multiplication precedes division?
How does such a simple not-even-an-equation cause so much trouble?