Party Vibe

Initially got the correct answer (by thinking in terms of how a computer would evaluate this if there were no rounding errors introduced by the recurring decimal) – only to end up selecting the wrong answer due to confusion from flawed maths teaching from junior school onwards (it also confuses many Americans but unsurprisingly not SE Asians and mainland Europeans). Another factor may be the 1990s decline in computer science teaching worldwide….

in the UK we often get taught BODMAS ( brackets, orders [1], {division, multiplication}, {addition, subtraction} )

[1] exponents/powers/square roots

2^8 = 256
√4 = 2 (I think this can also be shown using exponents but I’ve forgotten how)

I deliberately put those other brackets as well as the square brackets for the footnote, a long running internet convention in there as the way this is traditionally taught by many teachers introduces confusion.

We both got the division bit correct but overlooked that precedence of division and multiplication and then addition and subtraction is equal for those operations, and they should go from left to right).

Easy to get confused, mistakenly carry out the addition first and then evaluate 9-(9+1) = -1 when it should be (9-9)+1 = 1

This (as it is easy to forget) should be made far clearer when teaching people maths – even the BBC article perpetuates the confusion..

BBC – Standard Grade Bitesize Maths I – Order of operation : Revision

curious though so many young Japanese would get this incorrect – I unearthed the source article where the journos and a University professor expressed considerable angst at this decline in maths skills. As my language skills do not stretch to Japanese I had to put it through Google Translate and unearthed this in the translation both amusing but worrying at the same time as if you want to become an engineer and make stuff that works well and safely it is advisable to pay attention to your arithmetic..

@tryptameanie 983797 wrote:

Can You Solve This Math Problem That Went Viral In Japan? | IFLScience

+1

@tryptameanie 983797 wrote:

Can You Solve This Math Problem That Went Viral In Japan? | IFLScience

yes there is something strange. I TOLD U, U GONNA MAKE ME CRAZY IF I SEARCH, WHAT IS THE REASON?????

FUCK 3 HOOURS LATER I JUST SEE AM RIGHT BY SEING THERE IS THE SOLUTION ON VIDEO, BUT MY PROBLEM WAS TOTALLY AN OTHER PROBLEM, I COULDNT UNDERSTAD WHY :

9-9+1=1 AND IF I MAKE 9- 9+1 = 9 – 10 = -1 :you_crazy:hopeless: