It's SEVEN!

[iiibbb]

This post running around facebook

6 - 1 x 0 + 2 / 2

ANSWER IT!


It should be a national embarrassment that only 30% of the people answering it are getting it right. It is a double tragedy that those getting it wrong are so adamant that they are right to the point of making fun of those who are actually right.

No wonder our economy collapsed.

Sheesh.

It's 7. If you don't get 7, and you hold any position of power... shoot yourself; you are part of the problem.

[rug]

1. I get 1.

(6-1) = 5

5 x 0 = 0

2/2 =1

0 + 1 = 1

If i do it backwards I get 5.

[iiibbb]

2. I'm sure you do...

What answer do you get if you stick your head in the microwave?

[rug]

4. Well, when I say get the hell out of there, somebody says

"Fuck you, the answer is SEVEN!"

[Left Brain]

21. rofl

[bluesbassman]

3. That's what I get. How could it be 7?

[rug]

5. He set the timer for seven minutes.

[bluesbassman]

7. I see. Do they also say "Froderick"?

[iiibbb]

6. Order of operations... open a math book... try a calculator that cost more than 99 cents.

Parentheses
Powers
Multiplication/Division
Addition/Subtraction

6 - 1 x 0 + 2 / 2

=

6 - 0 + 1

=

7


This is grade-school math... there is not a different answer if you work it backwards. That is why math has rules.

It is truly frightening that as many people get this wrong, as get it wrong. Chinese students are probably starting Calculus right out of grade school, and our population can't deal with simple math.

[rug]

8. I think your problem is you'd really like it to be 7.

[bluesbassman]

9. Well at my age the only book related to math I open is a check book.

And I hate rules.

[pokerfan]

15. 6 - (1 x 0) + (2 / 2)

6 - 0 + 1 = 7

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations#The_standard_order_of_operations

[LynneSin]

26. You Multiply and Divide before you add or subtract

Unless there are () around the calculation

THUS 6 - 1 x 0 + 2 / 2

6 - 0 + 1 or 7

If you want 1 then you'd have to put () around the 6-1

(6-1) X 0 + 2/2

that means 5 X 0 + 1

0 +1 = 1

[rug]

38. There you go!

[Dr. Strange]

35. If you were an Italian mathematician...

you'd be in jail right now.

[rug]

39. I wonder if I should ask him whether I should used sliced or shredded mozarella to make pizza.

[Orrex]

10. That's what she said.

Some people insisted that the film is called Snow White and the Six Dwarfs, but she was adamant.

[rug]

11. Everyone forgets about Surly.

[pinboy3niner]

51. And don't call me Shirley!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

12. I did it this way:

Six minus one equals five. Times zero equals zero.

2 / 2 means two divided by two. That is also zero.

Am I not interpreting it correctly?

[rug]

13. Duck!

[alcibiades_mystery]

14. Remember "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally"

Arithmetic has a (completely arbitrary, as far as I can tell) order in which you should perform its operations. In grade school, we learned "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally" as a memory device for this order:

Please = Parenthesis
Excuse = Exponents, or Powers
My = Multiplication
Dear = Division
Aunt = Addition
Sally = Subtraction

These little riddles have been flying around the Internet for years, and they rely on a very basic inversion: because we read left to right, we attempt to move left to right in the order of operations. Instead, we have to follow the Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally rule to get answers in an order other than left to right.

This is the way the mathletes made fun of the other students in junior high school. It's actually rather remarkable that the OP is getting so worked up over this fairly predictable cliche of a mathlete puzzle.

[Art_from_Ark]

17. Two divided by two is one

Any number divided by itself equals one.

Zero divided by any number (except zero) is zero.

No number can be divided by zero.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

19. Yes. I am an idiot when it comes to anything mathmatical.

[Art_from_Ark]

20. Think of it this way

You have two quarters. If you divide them into groups of two, that will give you just one group. Hence, two divided by two is one

[hunter]

16. I use Reverse Polish Notation for everything, so I never have these problems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation

[kentauros]

18. I'm going to ignore your "order of operations rules"

on purpose

Thus, my answer is i

[HopeHoops]

23. You're imagining things.

Ironically, the "imaginary" number is more real than "real" numbers. Laminar flow that allows flight and almost all forms of fluid dynamics only work if i exists.

[kentauros]

24. Interestingly, the Romanian/Frenchman

that gave you the "stickiness" of airfoils (or something like that), was shut down by the French government in the 1950s for developing a solar distillation unit that was so efficient that it was cutting into the government's sea salt production.

Henri Coanda and the "Coanda Effect"

In the 1950s, the French inventor Henri Coanda designed an elegant method to desalinate water in Morocco (USP #2,803,591). He built a silo with reflective walls, mounted several inches over a tidal pool, angled so as to catch and multiply the sunlight, thus superheating the air in the chimney. The rising hot air drew in cold air from the bottom, and became super-saturated with moisture by the time it reached the top. Pure water flowed from the condensers there. The residual brine also is of great value to chemical industry and in the construction of solar ponds. The French government forced Coanda to cease operations because his device threatened their monopoly on salt production. (Figure 29)

Figure 29 ~ Coanda's USP # 2,803,591:



http://www.rexresearch.com/airwells/airwells.htm

[HopeHoops]

25. Seems reasonable. Curiously, pot is illegal for a similar reason...

The movie "Reefer Madness" (cult classic now) was funded by the cotton industry. Hemp has always been superior to cotton and even the cotton industry knew this. EVERY sail and rigging on the ships that won our independence and served in our battles prior to the 30's were made of hemp. Note: Industrial hemp is what we call "headache weed" - it has very little if any THC.

Because of the threat to their livelihoods, the cotton moguls commissioned the movie "Reefer Madness" to give the impression that if you took so much as one hit off of a reefer joint you would go insane, kill your girlfriend, pass out, and admit to committing murder.

As Gallagher said 30 years ago, "Pot doesn't make me want to commit crimes. It makes me want to lie around on the couch." It was the same playbook back then as it is now with the GOP. Make up a lie and repeat it. Sound familiar? "Zeig Heil!"

[kentauros]

27. I thought it was Hearst that funded that movie

due to hemp cutting into his investment into the woodpulp paper industry. We've probably both read the same info on hemp. I have shoes that are falling apart because ecolution doesn't make that particular hemp shoe style any more

Governments haven't wanted people to be happy for thousands of years. It's harder to control happy people. Now, where's my ketamine?

[HopeHoops]

42. That's entirely possible. ANY fiber is inferior to hemp. Still, "Reefer Madness" is a hoot to watch.

It almost predicted "FOX Noise". It opens with "a scientist" (or something) saying "what you are about to see didn't happen, but it could". The only difference is that FOX doesn't bother with the "this didn't happen" part.

[eppur_se_muova]

53. Thanks for that great reference! I had seen a cover story in Pop Sci years ago ...

about a similar tower for desalination and power generation, but have never found the article again.

[kentauros]

55. You're welcome :)

I'd read about it years ago and ever since I've always wondered why countries that set up desalination plants don't go for something cheaper and easier, like this design (I'm sure there are other solar designs that could work, too.) Seems like California would be a perfect place for a solar desalination plant

[Dr. Strange]

36. You just have to go and make everything complex, don't you?

Kudos on calling it i though, and not j like certain engineers.

[kentauros]

37. I can't say that I've seen equations by engineers

so I've never seen the use of "j" instead. Why would they do that? Or are they confusing it with e?

[Dr. Strange]

40. No, nothing so silly.

They use i for current or some such thing, and so they had to use a different letter for the imaginary unit. Serves them right for trying to sully mathematics with applications.

[kentauros]

41. I never understood why "I" was used for Current.

Seems like they'd have saved it for something sane, like Impedance or Induction

[HopeHoops]

22. A lot of people don't comprehend order of operations, but yes, it is seven.

[Arugula Latte]

28. Order of Operations:

Parenthesis -- none, does not apply
Exponents -- none, does not apply
Multiply -- 1 x 0 = 0
Divide -- 2/2 = 1
So far we have 6 - 0 + 1
Add and Subtract, and you're left with ... 7

[Ptah]

29. There... Are... Four... Lights!

[MrsBrady]

50. i'm watching that episode, right now!

good thing there is no math involved in watching star trek...
I'd be sunk.

[NCTraveler]

30. While I fully understand the order of operations.

It is not necessary knowledge to hold a position of power in most situations in life. Therefore, I hope you do not hold any position of power, as you would then be a part of the ego and power driven problem in society.

[iiibbb]

31. Right... elementary math isn't important.

It is right up with telling me evolution is "just a theory".

This is a severe disqualifier in my book.

[rrneck]

32. I think the best answer might be

to write the equation properly.

[iiibbb]

43. It is written properly.

Just not explicitly.

[rrneck]

45. Ah. Shows what i know.

I can explain cubism but I don't know what seven times nine is.

[eppur_se_muova]

54. One could argue that it is not written clearly and unambiguously ...

even those who know the "correct" order of operations, in order to obtain the "correct" answer, must **assume** that the person who wrote the expression was aware of the same rules as well, and used them correctly, but this is not stated in the OP. This is the difference between science written for scientists, and good popular science exposition -- the latter, if it used any formulas at all, would guide the reader through the correct interpretation of the formula, never assuming that the reader was familiar with such things. A good popular science writer would have made sure that the expression was presented as {6 - (1 x 0)} + (2 / 2), thus assisting the reader in carrying out the operations in the proper order, even if they didn't know why that was the proper order. (Anal retentive) purists may argue that the parentheses are superfluous, but it is also true that they don't hurt anything. Idiotproofing is always a good idea, even if there is a shortage of idiots, which can't be counted on.

Without context, one can't know whether this expression was lifted from a medieval text, or even decoded from Babylonian heiroglyphics, in neither of which cases could the "proper" order of operations be assumed. Far from indicating that the world is full of idiots, the fact that so many people got the "wrong" answer is testament to the incomplete presentation of the problem (which is contrived in the first place). It's all a question of whether it was really written to be clearly understood, or written to entrap the ignorant, who are then to be derided for lack of fairly specialized knowledge (my bet is on the latter).

I've learned a (very) little about programming, and I make damned sure to disambiguate expressions with parens, especially Boolean expressions. To do otherwise is to start down the slippery slope to Obtuse-C.

[MiddleFingerMom]

33. 42

[rrneck]

34. Show ypur work.

And when you do I've got a favor or two to ask relating to certain home improvements and Zoey Deschanel.

[Bucky]

44. No, it's... um... wait. Yes, you're right. It's seven.

Had to think about that.

[femmocrat]

46. Just please tell me one instance when I would ever have to use that?

And why I should care?

My theory about why they emphasize math is because it keeps kids from thinking about the opposite sex while they are occupied with all that homework.
When I hit college and found out that I no longer had to take math classes, my social life improved considerably!

[iiibbb]

47. If you can't fathom why math is important, way to reinforce a stereotype

perhaps explains why women's incomes aren't on parwith men's

[femmocrat]

48. Now you are reinforcing a stereotype, aren't you?

I believe that most women don't earn as much as men, not because SOME of them don't use math, but because they are relegated to low-paying jobs.

And BTW, you didn't answer my question.

[Ptah]

49. Is a 10-32 screw larger than a 10-24 screw?

[tandot]

52. used Microsoft Excel formula =6-(1*0)+(2/2)

= 7

[Scuba]

56. My Dear Aunt Sally know the answer.