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 1 month ago by Obelix@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] barsoap@lemm.ee -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] SmartmanApps@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

And that’s why people don’t write equations like that

Says someone who clearly hasn't looked in any Maths textbooks

If you wrote 6 + 4 / 2 in a paper you’d get reviewers complaining that it’s ambiguous

Only if their Maths was very poor. #MathsIsNeverAmbiguous

Working mathematicians never came up with PEMDAS

Yes they did.

which disambiguates it without parenthesis

It was never ambiguous to begin with.

Noone else does it that way

Says someone who has never looked in a non-U.S. Maths textbooks - BIDMAS, BODMAS, BEDMAS, all textbooks have one variation or another.