3 ms·
Those posts really are a curse. And they are usually not quite that simple, there is always some PEDMAS quirk to it so ~70% of the people get it wrong, causing
by jandrese 5y ago
Those posts really are a curse. And they are usually not quite that simple, there is always some PEDMAS quirk to it so ~70% of the people get it wrong, causing yet more comments pointing out how they are wrong and further inflating engagement. Those are worse than the stupid Farmville/Mafia Wars posts that used to horrendously clutter up the platform, at least those are easy to block. Those math things come from all different sources so blocking them isn't effective.
- crdrost 5y agoFor folks that are out of the loop, the post looks something like “24/4*3: 80% of people get this wrong!” and the arguments in comments are between people who do this the way most computers do (multiplication and division have the same priority and the leftmost one goes first, so you first calculate 24/4 to get 6 then multiply by 3 to get 18) versus the way that the acronym literally says to do it, (multiplication comes before division in the acronym so you first multiply 3x4 to get 12, then divide 24/12=2). Part of the reason that it generates so much animosity is that we condition people to think of math as always having a right answer, it is the Fount of Objective Truth. The idea that math is sublimely subjective, is indeed an artistic medium, does not seem to be well-appreciated and is often not even acknowledged. This is usually chalked up to the fact that math has “rules,” which is a very strange sentiment because the points in a sports game also follow “rules” of a similar sort but we usually don't regard those as either objective or subjective, they exist in a murky third world where we do not ask those questions...