this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Triasha@lemmy.world 72 points 22 hours ago (4 children)

Pemdas, parenthesis first, for a total of 3. Then multiplication, 15, then addition. 17. What's hard about this?

[–] Hawanja@lemmy.world 21 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

What's hard about it is people are fucking stupid.

[–] TheKingBee@lemmy.world -2 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

No, it's written poorly to drive engagement. People read left to right and try to do math that way too, but if you want to be mean to people who don't remember things they learned in elementary school then never applied in real life you write it like OP.

(8-5)5+2

Far easier for most people, but then you don't get the arguments...

[–] Tyro@lemmy.world 1 points 29 minutes ago

Yes, thank you! Sure, it'd be great if people remembered arithmetic rules, but just write it better and it won't matter.

[–] baines@lemmy.cafe 19 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

you go the other direction below the equator

[–] Bakkoda@lemmy.world 11 points 16 hours ago

Legit gave me pause for like half a second. Damnit lol

[–] TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Isn't the southern hemisphere above the equator if you live there

[–] baines@lemmy.cafe 3 points 14 hours ago

depends if you are normal or planar in ENU coordinates

[–] AquaTofana@lemmy.world 7 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

I fucking suck at math and totally just re-proved it to myself with this problem lmao.

It didn't make sense to me to multiply the 3 & the 5 with zero consideration for the "2". I have ALWAYS struggled with the steps to solve these types of equations.

So the answer I got was 21. Some of us are just bad with numbers, I s'pose.

[–] Rcklsabndn@sh.itjust.works 1 points 42 minutes ago

That's the answer I arrived at as well, don't feel so bad. I'm more of a writer than a calculator, though.

[–] mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 10 hours ago

This is absolutely not a problem of being bad with numbers. That's like if I had trouble reading a Chinese sentence about gardening and said I'm just bad with plants. My issue is that I'm not familiar with the notation used to explain the concept - not a problem with the concept itself that the notation merely arbitrarily symbolizes.

Being good or bad at math is not really an inherent thing, aside from some geniuses and some people with disabilities. If you want to be good at math, you can be!

[–] borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 18 hours ago

The numbers in the equation and their totals are completely irrelevant to the order you perform the operations.

I don’t think it’s an issue of “being bad with numbers”, I think the issue is not understanding the logic or being able to understand the bottom up type of thinking or something.

[–] Chakravanti@monero.town 9 points 22 hours ago (1 children)
[–] SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works 1 points 55 minutes ago

Cruel Parent's Thesis?