this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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A fake Facebook event disguised as a math problem has been one of its top posts for 6 months (www.engadget.com)
submitted 5 days ago by Obelix@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

What fundamental property of the universe says that

6 + 4 / 2 is 8 instead of 5?

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Nothing. And that's why people don't write equations like that: You either see

     4
6 +
***
     2

or

 6 + 4
-------
   2

If you wrote 6 + 4 / 2 in a paper you'd get reviewers complaining that it's ambiguous, if you want it to be on one line write (6+4) / 2 or 6 + (4/2) or 6 + ⁴⁄₂ or even ½(6 + 4) Working mathematicians never came up with PEMDAS, which disambiguates it without parenthesis, US teachers did. Noone else does it that way because it does not, in the slightest, aid readability.