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 :)
@wischi "Funny enough all the examples that N.J. Lennes list in his letter use implicit multiplications and thus his rule could be replaced by the strong juxtaposition".
Weird they didn't need two made-up terms to get it right 100 years ago.
Indeed Duncan. :-)
"strong juxtaposition" already existed even then in Terms (which Lennes called Terms/Products, but somehow missed the implication of that) and The Distributive Law, so his rule was never adopted because it was never needed - it was just Lennes #LoudlyNotUnderstandingThings (like Terms, which by his own admission was in all the textbooks). 1917 (ii) - Lennes' letter (Terms and operators)
In other words...
...Terms/Products., as we do today in modern high school Maths textbooks (but we just use Terms in this context, not Products).