https://zeta.one/viral-math/

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 :)

  • Arthur Besse@lemmy.mlMEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Has literally never happened. Texas Instruments is the only brand who continues to do it wrong […] all the other brands who were doing it wrong have reverted

    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”.

    The truth is that there are many different math notations which often do lead to ambiguities

    Not within any region there isn’t.

    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.

    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).

    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?