this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by wischi@programming.dev to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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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 :)

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[–] SmartmanApps@programming.dev 1 points 8 months ago

What’s especially wild to me is that even the position of “it’s ambiguous” gets almost as much pushback as trying to argue that one of them is universally correct.

That's because following the rules of Maths is universally correct.

arguing vehemently that implicit multiplication having precedence was correct and to do otherwise was wrong, full stop

He was using the wrong words, but he was correct - the actual rules are The Distributive Law and Terms ("implicit multiplication" is a rule made up by those who have forgotten these 2 rules).