I wrote a (very long) blog post about those viral math problems and am looking for feedback, especially from people who are not convinced that the problem is ambiguous.
It’s about a 30min read so thank you in advance if you really take the time to read it, but I think it’s worth it if you joined such discussions in the past, but I’m probably biased because I wrote it :)
I stopped when he said it was ambiguous (it’s not, as per the rules of Maths), then scanned the rest to see if there were any Maths textbook references, and there wasn’t (as expected). Just another wrong blog.
Has literally never happened. Texas Instruments is the only brand who continues to do it wrong (and it’s right there in their manual why) - all the other brands who were doing it wrong have reverted back to doing it correctly (there’s a Youtube video about this somewhere). I have a Sharp calculator (who have literally always done it correctly) and most of my students have Casio, so it’s never been an issue.
I don’t ask them to trust me - I’m a Maths teacher, I teach them the rules of Maths. From there they can see for themselves which calculators are wrong and why. Our job as teachers is for our students to eventually not need us anymore and work things out for themselves.
Not within any region there isn’t. e.g. European countries who use a comma instead of a decimal point. If you’re in one of those countries it’s a comma, if you’re not then it’s a decimal point.
In Australia it’s the only thing we ever use, and from what I’ve seen also the U.K. (every U.K. textbook I’ve seen uses it).
Go back and read it again and you’ll see all of those examples are worded in the past tense, except for ISO, and all ISO has said is “don’t use it”, for reasons which haven’t been specified, and in any case everyone in a Maths-related position is clearly ignoring them anyway (as you would. I’ve seen them over-reach in Computer Science as well, where they also get ignored by people in the industry).
Ok so you’re saying it never happened, but then in the very next sentence you acknowledge that you know it is happening with TI today, and then also admit you know that it did happen with some other brands in the past?
But, if you had read the linked post before writing numerous comments about it, you’d see that it documents that the ambiguity actually exists among both old and currently shipping models from TI, HP, Casio, and Canon, today, and that both behaviors are intentional and documented.
There is no bug; none of these calculators is “wrong”.
Ok, this is the funniest thing I’ve read so far today, but if this is what you are teaching high school students it is also rather sad because you are doing them a disservice by teaching them that there is no ambiguity where there actually is.
If OP’s blog post is too long for you (it is quite long) i recommend reading this one instead: The PEMDAS Paradox.
By “we” do you mean high school teachers, or Australian society beyond high school? Because, I’m pretty sure the latter isn’t true, and I’m skeptical of the former. I thought generally the ÷ symbol mostly stops being used (except as a calculator button) even before high school, basically as soon as fractions are taught. Do you have textbooks where the fraction bar is used concurrently with the obelus (÷) division symbol?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
never happened
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