Viral Maths Problems
Every year, we see a fresh wave of 'viral' maths problems. You know the ones: 'Can you solve this?' The catch is, they rarely give you the answer, and the equations are usually a mess. Let's unpack one of these problems to see why they’re so confusing—and how we can actually fix them. Example The last one I saw online was the challenge: Can you solve? 8 ÷ 2(2+2) My first observation is the unusual use of ÷ (mathematicians prefer / ) and bad bracketing. Let us clean up the expression to clear up some ambiguity: 8 ÷ 2 × (2+2) This makes it much easier to the next step of applying BODMAS (US refers to this as PEDMAS ) . The order of operations here are: Solve the Brackets, then From left to right apply division's and multiplications From left to right apply addition's and subtraction's Here: division and multiplication have equal precedence as do addition and subtraction. Applying these operations gives: 8 ÷ 2(2+2) = 8...