this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] TheKingBee@lemmy.world -1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (8 children)

Do you remember how this reply thread started? I literally fixed the equation so that it would be less confusing to people, I couldn't do that if I didn't know what order it was meant to go in...

I'm just not assuming that people are stupid because they got tripped up by something designed to trip them up.

It's writing like this with math, you can find the sentence structure, but it makes it a puzzle people will mess up unnecessarily It's writing like this with math.

[–] Hawanja@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (6 children)

But you didn't "Fix" the equation, because it wasn't "broken." You just rearranged it so that it made more sense to you, yourself, personally. It already made sense to other people who've learned the proper order of operations. Your metaphor fails here because unlike the signs you posted above, this equation is perfectly understandable in either form.

I'm sorry my friend, math is not "mean." You cannot use math to oppress people.

[–] TheKingBee@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Those sentence are also perfectly understandable, once you've understood the order of the words, but they're written in such away that you have to think about it.

If there are multiple ways to do things and one is more accessible to most people with less effort that isn't the objectively right way but it is better.

It's obviously not just myself as posting out of order math problems are a constant source of online engagement.

[–] SmartmanApps@programming.dev 0 points 7 months ago

posting out of order math problems

There's no such thing, only people who remember the rules of Maths and people who don't

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