Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

Register Log in

What is 6 - 1 x 0 + 2 / 2 ? 17

Status
Not open for further replies.
charliealphabravo

charliealphabravo

Structural
May 7, 2003
796
0
16
US
OK, so my architect boss is trying to stump me with this one. He says he saw it on some discussion group that was saying that engineers are poor in math because they answer 7. That was my answer as well, and since I am an engineer I must ergo be bad at math.

I am pretty sure there is no planet where the answer to this is 5, but what do I know?

Discuss.
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

Sort by date Sort by votes
"s long as you know the rules that the CNC code interpreter is using then a programmer can get the correct answer from it. It is not really bad math and it doesn't change the order of operations required to get the correct answer. "

It is bad math if the resulting answer is wrong, unless they're willing to cop to plain old incompetence. But, that's most likely because modern programmers are actually CS majors, as opposed to math majors that had to find a job after graduation, like in the old days.

TTFN
faq731-376
7ofakss
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
The one thing that scare me most about this, is how many of the people on the facebook thread (which I believe is where this originated from) are getting the answer incorrect. That's the future of our world folks...

Boottmills
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
It's scary enough that people relay so heavily on search engines like Google etc to answer just about any question. (At least Google agrees that "6 - 1 x 0 + 2 / 2" is 7: ) But try asking Yahoo: - the "Top Answer" there at the moment is 1!

But accessing social media sites like Facebook to resolve your maths problems? Now that's REALLY scary!

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
But try asking Yahoo: - the "Top Answer" there at the moment is 1!

(Has anyone EVER had a useful result to ANY question they have found on "Yahoo! Answers"? [surprise] )

And I love the fact that the following poster quite rightly corrects the "Best Answer", saying that you have to use PEMDAS - but then goes on to "prove" that the "correct" answer using PEMDAS is "5", and signs off with the following tag-line:

"Years of schooling, and a COMPLETE understanding of the PEMDAS method."

Priceless!

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I've GIVEN useful results to questions there, and racked up about 13,000 points before I gave up. The current leader has over 1 million points. After a while there, I realized that it was too pitiful to spend much time there.

It seems like the question has been deleted from the site.

TTFN
faq731-376
7ofakss
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
This is just too hard a problem! I've been using 6 - 3 x 2 which the correct answer is zero but half of those I have asked said six. When they say six, I ask them to check it on their smartphone which tend to give the correct answer. Many calculators give the wrong answer. I'd love to give this to the folks in Congress!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Denial said:
XWB. I also learned it as BODMAS, which I suspect shows both our ages. The O does stand for "of", and I never understood why "of" should have any priority over other ways of expressing a multiplication operation.
As for the absence of exponentiation in that aide-memoire...
Click to expand...
If I remember correctly, the "O" stands for "Order", not "of" ... and "Order" (UK) equates to "Exponent" (US)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I think either of those acronyms is too complex and obscure to be useful as all these posts about their meaning have demonstrated. Just learn the proper order of precedence and use it.

----------------------------------------

The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
The O most definitely stood for "of" in the Australian (Victorian) education system in the early 1960s. ("Of" as in "a quarter of a gallon".)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
It's sort of interesting that even though we all know how to do it, there are such a variety of different statements of the rules, several of which give different results.

For instance two of those posted above don't mention the equal precedence of DM and AS, and the one that does gives a version in which "Of" has the same precedence as "Order".

Doug Jenkins
Interactive Design Services
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
IT SEEMS THAT ROMNEY MATH ALSO GETS A 0

"People will work for you with blood and sweat and tears if they work for what they believe in......" - Simon Sinek
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

SBaugh
  • Locked
  • Question
Conditional Formating - 2 conditions 1
2
Replies
25
Views
26
SkipVought
SkipVought
Denial
  • Locked
  • Question
Early alternative to ISFORMULA() function 1
2
Replies
20
Views
21
3DDave
3DDave
As-Lag
  • Locked
  • Question
Setting the path in windows 11 1
Replies
4
Views
10
As-Lag
As-Lag
JayEnn1
  • Locked
  • Question
Excel macro worked great with Outlook, need update help for Windows 10 Mail App
Replies
5
Views
6
JayEnn1
JayEnn1
mgilbertson
  • Locked
  • Question
Excel - 'X' in cell upon clicking 4
Replies
14
Views
15
Agent666
Agent666
Back
Top