..

yea...that's what i said. cause if it was ambiguous, then saying it's 2 wouldn't be interpreting incorrectly. ;)

And I'm saying that "easy to misinterpret" = "ambiguous". You can't absolve the writer of 100% of the responsibility to be clear.

All wordplay aside, it doesn't matter if technically it's interpretable. It's not a coincidence that people get a different answer. The equation is intentionally ambiguous. We all know it. It's obvious. This is all about sociology, not math.

Those are always good,

..

heh. however if this problem was given to on a 5th grade math test, "this expression is ambiguous" is not going to get you points for the question.


i really wonder....will this meme make it onto Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?

lol awesome!

I had the same teacher for Calc 2,3 and advanced mathematics, got a break from him for Diff Eqs. He was legendary in his own mind for assigning unsolvable problems as group projects. The class would break into study groups and work for a week or two on the problems... even when we caught on to his game and the unsolvable problems.. he required proof why the problems were unsolvable..

When I used to throw darts I imagined his face as the cork...Now with the benefit of hindsight working on those problems was all part of the learning experience..

Yeah the first couple pages are hilarious.

Order of operations. A number outside of parentheses indicates multiplication. Simply re-write it as this after doing inside the parentheses:

48/2X12

Re-writing it with 48 over a line is wrong. Nothing groups the 2 with the 12.

Well done. Very funny!

bump for 288

The correct answer is 2!

I don't give a damn what these bogus calculators say. :mad:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1302910737.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1302910752.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1302910768.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1302910802.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1302910819.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1302910838.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1302910851.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1302910865.jpg

I finally found a legitimate calculator.

Any of you thirtyseven percenters gonna have the audacity to argue with THIS?

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1302914188.jpg

It's a great question. I have shown this equation to several people. They all answer 2.

It seems to be logical to divide 48 by 2x12 = 2

I agree that it is a poorly formatted question and makes it very confusing.

Most of us are college grads with years of math, stat, calc, etc. and still argue the answer.


Sometimes, just because it is right doesn't make it right.

When I look at the question, I see 48 / (2*12) but can also see the other side which is
48 / 2 * 12

Reminds me of

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1302917413.jpg

Sports
 

:) My answer is 2 ...

It is: 2

That is not a lamp; it's a closeup detail shot of a specially padded crutch designed for beach goers and nudists to alleviate underarm scratchiness and is marketed as 'The Cratch'.

How do you guys who think it's 2 explain that the above eight calculators say it's 288?

I'm joining this thread late but there's a certain order to which you perform the calculations. The order is operations in parenthesis then, multiply, divide, add, subtract. That's how I get 2.