40+40x0+1= (over 40,000 people looking awfully dumb on facebook)

[SuperBowlNachos]

Re: 40+40x0+1= (over 40,000 people looking awfully dumb on facebook)

Posted this on my Facebook.

Funny results kind of. My brother who has a masters and a guy who just graduated got it right. My sister in law, an old friend and my mom all who never graduated college got it wrong.

[buckeye02]

Re: 40+40x0+1= (over 40,000 people looking awfully dumb on facebook)

This has to be the worst thread on OS.

[Millennium]

This has to be the worst thread on OS.

I know of a certain roster thread that degrades to much worse depths on a yearly basis than this thread.

[joshuar9476]

Re: 40+40x0+1= (over 40,000 people looking awfully dumb on facebook)

I wept a little as a HS math teacher just now.....

i'm 19 years removed from high school math ... i had completely forgotten about order of operation and just assumed you went from left to right. sorry.

[st67]

Re: 40+40x0+1= (over 40,000 people looking awfully dumb on facebook)

There's another one of these on another forum and it's 50/50. And even "experts" have reasons for it being one way or the other - so I don't think anyone is looking dumb. It's just a poorly written equation.

This is why you use brackets.

Is it asking:

(40+40)x(0+1)?
40+(40x0)+1?
(40+40)x0+1?
40+40x(0+1)

It's just poorly written and purposely designed to make people 'look awfully dumb'.

[Colts18]

Re: 40+40x0+1= (over 40,000 people looking awfully dumb on facebook)

No such thing as a trick question. You either know the answer or not.

[st67]

Re: 40+40x0+1= (over 40,000 people looking awfully dumb on facebook)

No such thing as a trick question. You either know the answer or not.

Google and Youtube it.

There are people with scientific calculators giving different answers.

It's poorly written - simple as that.

That's why parenthesis exist.

[cjonesfan921]

Re: 40+40x0+1= (over 40,000 people looking awfully dumb on facebook)

It would still be 41 as (40x)*(0) = 0.

It depends how you read it....I wouldn't look at it the way you did. It wouldn't make sense to me, to take it was (40x)*(0)...

If you took it as 40 + 40x^0 + 1 ...which is how I would take it if I thought it was a variable...it would be 42.

Obviously the correct answer, as presented, is 41.

[SuperBowlNachos]

Re: 40+40x0+1= (over 40,000 people looking awfully dumb on facebook)

There's another one of these on another forum and it's 50/50. And even "experts" have reasons for it being one way or the other - so I don't think anyone is looking dumb. It's just a poorly written equation.

This is why you use brackets.

Is it asking:

(40+40)x(0+1)?
40+(40x0)+1?
(40+40)x0+1?
40+40x(0+1)

It's just poorly written and purposely designed to make people 'look awfully dumb'.

That is the point to make people look dumb.

There are no parentheses. You can't just add them to make the answer what you want it to be. It was presented as 40 plus 40 multiplied by 0 plus 1. So the answer is 41. It doesn't matter how poorly written it is, the answer is 41.

[fishepa]

Re: 40+40x0+1= (over 40,000 people looking awfully dumb on facebook)

Wow, I thought it was common sense that multiplying/dividing was always done first.

[Kruza]

Re: 40+40x0+1= (over 40,000 people looking awfully dumb on facebook)

Wow, I thought it was common sense that multiplying/dividing was always done first.

That's the case only for this particular equation since there are no parentheses or exponents to deal with. The "PEMDAS" rule applies (order of operations) to solve this one, as slickdtc pointed out.

Kruza

[ryan36]

Re: 40+40x0+1= (over 40,000 people looking awfully dumb on facebook)

Yeah, it could be more clear... BUT it wasn't, and you still had the minimum information to get the correct answer.

I wonder who standardized the order of operations- or it an American thing that the rest of the world doesn't use? That'd be hilarious if in China, the answer is 1.

[fishepa]

Re: 40+40x0+1= (over 40,000 people looking awfully dumb on facebook)

That's the case only for this particular equation since there are no parentheses or exponents to deal with. The "PEMDAS" rule applies (order of operations) to solve this one, as slickdtc pointed out.

Kruza

Yeah I know. I thought that was common sense as well.

[Bellsprout]

Re: 40+40x0+1= (over 40,000 people looking awfully dumb on facebook)

I got it wrong.

2 hours after I got out of my college math class, where I'm getting a B.

That's what I get for not really thinking about it at all.

[SuperBowlNachos]

Re: 40+40x0+1= (over 40,000 people looking awfully dumb on facebook)

I probably would have gotten it wrong, but I was adding up recruiting points for my NCAA Online Dynasty and I made the mistake of adding some numbers then multiplying all in one. Realize you had to get throw it in parentheses or get the answer then multiply it.